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Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN MAR - 9 1975 - FEB 16 197g6 02 L161— 0-1096 Peck. Sy 8 r, kk , ent a. ‘ a ¥e ’ as) ; : ‘i me: ay ON THE STUDY OF CHARACTER, INCLUDING An Estimate of albrenalogy. BY ALEXANDER BAIN, A.M. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. LONDON: PARKER, SON, AND BOURN, WEST STRAND. 1861. The right of Translation is reserved, LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, — COVENT GARDEN, PREFACE. HE present work is intended, if possible, to reanimate the interest in the analytical study of human character, which was considerably awakened by the attention drawn to phrenology, and which seems to have declined with the comparative neglect of that study at the present time. There is nothing more certain, than that the discriminating knowledge of individual character is a primary condition of much of the social improvement that the present age is panting for. The getting the right man into the right place is mainly a problem of the judgment of character ; the mere wish to promote the fitting person is nugatory in the absence of the discrimination. Our further progress in the knowledge of character must proceed in great part from more searching inquiries into the human mind. Phrenology, notwithstanding its onesidedness, has done good service, by showing with more emphasis than had ever been done before, that human beings are widely different in their mental tastes and aptitudes, and by affording a scheme for representing and classifying the points of character, which is in many respects an improvement upon the common mode of describing in- dividual differences. But neither this scheme nor any ther, can be set up as finality on so difficult a subject ; oa it is to be wished that a certain portion of the scientific intellect of our generation would devote itself to the pro- Vi PREFACE. ‘ motion of a branch of knowledge that concerns our wel- fare no less than astronomy, geology, or mechanics. The course here pursued is, first, to give a critical exami- nation of Phrenology, as being the only System of Charac- ter hitherto elaborated, and then to lay out the subject according to the plan deemed on the whole the best. This double treatment has many advantages to compensate for the want of outward symmetry. The Phrenological parti- tion of the mind, if not accepted by all philosophers, is well known to the general public; hence any observations, tending either to confirm or to impugn it, have a chance of being readily understood. When a subject is either very extensive from the multitude of its details, or very profound from the subtlety of its principles, nothing does more for clearness than to approach it from various points of view. A system, inferior on the whole, may still bring out some portions of the subject to peculiar advantage. It requires a great and marked superiority in the latest development of any science, to dispense entirely with the consideration of the prior modes of arrangement. - The occasional repetitions that occur under the present scheme will, I think, be found principally on topics requir- ing an expanded illustration, whether given in one place, or in more than one. | The criticism on Phrenology, occupying about half the volume, has already appeared in Fraser's Magazine. TABLE OF CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. THEORIES OF CHARACTER. ’ Characters of Theophrastus La Bruyére . Charles Fourier’s slash featiesd of chabatirs Samuel Bailey on the Science of Individual Character John Stuart Mill on Etholog CHAPTER ILI CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. Combe’s criticism of previous metaphysical philosophers . Phrenology drew attention to the connexion of mind and material organs . Facts in | support of this doctrine Phrenological doctrine of a mes of distinct cerebr 4 organs, in connexion with distinct mental powers ‘Applisanoh of this to found a science of CHARACTER Pretensions to supersede the previous systems of the Minp. Samuel Bailey on the Oe hesune of fe pi sional positions on our knowledge if the mind Province of the Science of Mind Not superseded, but pre- sae by a SSeience of Ghat racter . . : The Phrenological rashid The effects of Size of brain modified by het sanedet Doctrine of Temperaments an ancient and clumsy device . 62 32 vill TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preferable plan, an examination of the Bodily Organs, servatim Varieties of quality eeinbieed na this Neve eibatation Tests of a good quality of Nerve Organs of the Senses. : The Muscles. Mental cata onit are a high nee endowment ; ; The Digestion. Its great Sbaaits: to ie pide The Lungs and Respiration The Heart and Circulation : Temperaments resulting from the bunpeaye sk of the several organs : . ‘ Phrenological Divisions of the Mind : The Propensities and Sentiments not fexselstieratntig dis- tinct classes The true contrast lies Ae fis Native nas aa the various Feelings or Emotions . : The Intellectual Faculties include pure Emotions CHAPTER III. THE PROPENSITIES ACCORDING TO PHRENOLOGY. An ultimate analysis of the mind a necessary pre-requisite of the phrenological scheme Criteria of a primitive faculty : . Bailey’s conditions of an Organology of thé Brain THE PROPENSITIES ‘ > ti . Amativeness . ; : Amativeness implies both an scina we an deat slate A large cerebral organ would lead to ideal continuance of the feeling ; m 3 Proofs offered for the connexion bE Amativeness with the cerebellum . ; ; ; , ; Insufficiency of those proofs . How are we to deal with the observed oodh ane 7 2. Philoprogenitiveness : : : 5 Feelings that enter into pesehtal love Bee from a set source . ° : A peculiar maternal fealing rat improbable Departures from the proper meaning of the sentiment 45 47 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 3. Concentrativeness. Properly a phase of our Active nature : . : : 4. Adhesiveness. Only a mode of Tender Feeling Elements of the disposition to Sociability . 5. Combativeness. Mr. Cox’s definition ‘the tendency to oppose’ . may ie : Can the love of opposing be explained echt a separate instinct ! ; : Combativeness implies the possession of a weapon together with a stimulation from within cot constitutional activity is therefore implied Also the Sentiment of Power 6. Destructiveness. The same as the ee Himoton Explanation of the pleasure of Malevolence 6a. Alimentiveness. Probably a distinct feeling of iis mind. . : : 7. Secretiveness. Referable < oh nha 8. Acquisitiveness. The desire of Property . The advantages of Wealth sufficient to account for its pursuit . ‘ é ; - ; : 9. Constructiveness. In the final analysis a peculiarity of the Muscular System CHAPTER IV. THE SENTIMENTS ACCORDING TO PHRENOLOGY. The Sentiments under Phrenology compared with the Emotions under the Metaphysicians to. Self-esteem. Includes sentiments distinct in their origin ‘ Salesomblucehty. fts matnlyets Self-esteem implied under Self eorpinaener : Self-love and Selfishness different from the foregoing The Love of Power also distinct. Some of its forms 11. Love of Approbation, Antithesis of Pride and Vanity Self-suflicingness contrasted with dependence on the opinion of others 12. Cautiousness. Criticism of Mr. Bailey Analysis of Fear. How allied with Circumspection . Prudence. Special mode of being alive to the signs of other men’s feelings 13. I 4. is: 16. TS, 19. 2I. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Benevolence. Goodness of heart an innate quality Adhesiveness and Benevolence not fundamentally different . ; ; : Benevolence a form of Tender Teenotton ‘ . , Depends for its range on our capability of sympathy . Self-pity . ‘ , Veneration. The Raton Sadamterne beceisehle ‘ah other elements. . ; , : The peculiar element is the eatin aroused br ihe aspect of power : Various forms of the sentiment of veneration Firmness. Not the same as Will or Volition Energy must be coupled with some directing influence The memory of past pains and pleasures necessary to firmuess The peculiarity is thereon rtelleenens Conscientiousness. Combe on the Moral Theories The conscientious man fulfils the expectations of the society he lives in Sympathy an essential of conscience . Conscience sometimes rises above the standards of the time . ‘ . : . : : . Hope. A secondary effect, taken for the primary The hopeful temper a consequence of the happy temper . . . . . : The happy and sanguine Gieeton may arise from temperament. . . . . . Wonder . Ideality. Gall aliccatate an organ to st Confusion of Spurzheim’s definition of Ideality The susceptibility to Beauty or Fine Art the thing intended . : : 3 , : ° Fine Art emotions a numerous group Distinction between Sensibility and Erde power : : . Wit, or HB ciepliaees Chere: of the emotion of the ludicrous not settled Combe’s illustrations Imitation. The talent for ay fe II2 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES ACCORDING TO PHRENOLOGY. Subdivision of the Intellectual Faculties ar: aoe 33- t to . Form. Designated by Gall as the ennee of the know- ledge of persons reas visible form, and is the ee i sense of ante eye . : : . P : . Size. Form and Size erroneously treated as distinct faculties . Weight. The organ of ech niel pears Identity of meaning of Weight and Constructiveness Improbability of the allocation of the organ . Colouring. The pleasure in, and discrimination of colours The true optical Sarina of the sense of mat . Locality. The facility of remembering places An application of Form and Colour, directed by eel interest . Number. The aptitude for Arithmetic hai Arse Not an ultimate faculty of the mind . Order. As an ultimate susceptibility, can only mean the Sense of Symmetry to the eye . Lventuality. Takes cognisance of movements, or action . ° Indicates rather a oe aah to (esi i Form, made up by the stimulant of motion . Time. Incongruity of the functions ascribed to the faculty : - : : : 4 The sense of time weGbAble a Pragentae discrimination Tune. The musical faculty Language. The organ that first aaa Picrolosy to Gall : Different powers craplied hae a aor of lan- guage . Individuality. Prone them organ eee Greenest and Detail Antithesis of observation and Menara eatin Individuality already implied in the other observing faculties. : : A r , PAGE xll TABLE OF CONTENTS. REFLECTING FACULTIES 34. Comparison. Uncertainty as to the en fete of the faculty . : Might be interpreted as the Peyohological iin of Similarity . 35. Causality. Original Hee nation of Gall, the Meta- physical mind : True meaning the Geet aten or seni faculty . Although a genuine power, may not be an ultimate property of the mind. ; The aptitude most essential to a good healt CHAPTER VI. THE OMISSIONS OF PHRENOLOGY. Inadequate account of the Vocal powers Deficiencies in the department of Sensation Taste, Smell, and Touch proper not included . Some of the powers of Hearing not adverted to. Omissions in the Emotions ;—Pursuit or Plot-interest Sympathy not properly included The Love of Truth not done justice to Deficiencies in the Sensibilities to Fine Art ; Repudiation of the intellectual power of retaining impres- sions generally : Combe’s concessions on this point . . No place allowed for the statement of A hieaoaae CHAPTER VII. NATURAL, OR SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. There is a tendency to action, independent of the stimula- tion of the feelings ; : ‘ The degrees and varieties of the en energy make an parecer of character How far a property of the Muscular Sear The chief source must be the central Nerve force Probable conformation of the head in connexion with great energy PAGE 169 ab. 72 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 185 186 187 189 TABLE OF CONTENTS. The energy may be rapid and temporary, or slow and per- sistent ‘ : Two ways of explaining the pa heide How great natural energy manifests itself Briicukrenhs of a strong feeling Energy connected ean Endurance, On meee PE) Self: reliance 4 Emotional peculiarities of me ener Seis pater A deficieney of Emotion the only Peneral accompaniment Consequences, or applications, of the Energetic Tempera- ment . . : CHAPTER VIII. THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERAMENT. There is such a thing as a constitution emotional on the whole. : A certain physical embodiment necessary m fooling or emotion . This mechanism common ke all Br orbns May be powerfully or feebly developed in the Gridiyiae Common character of the state of eee or of pain, however originating : . The vigour of the emotional mechanism a meats condition of happiness : : Differences in bodily sonditin corr ee sonditie to leases and to pain ’ ‘ . In pleasure, there is a siiiqralatien® or Bealiation: of some or all of the powers of life ; in pain, the opposite . Proofs from the agencies of pleasure and pain . Proofs from the expression of the opposite states Is the large emotional nature equally formed to magnify pain ?. ; Answered in the negative . Outward demeanour Sah oielistto of the Sriotidual nature : ‘ : : Inward experience ‘ Conduct and pursuits. ; : : : Tendency to indolence ; reasons of hs Sanguine disposition . . 204 ° 1b. 205 206 2b. 2047 208 ab. ab. 209 2b. 210 211 212 214 215 ab. X1V TABLE OF CONTENTS. Relations to Intellect ; repugnance to the cold in specula- tion . : . ‘ . Charles James Fox. Contrast with Pitt ° The Celtic Races . ; : : : . > CHAPTER IX. SPECIAL EMOTIONS, OR TASTES. The common apparatus may be played upon with unequal blasts ‘ Impulsive character. epee Special Sensibilities : I. MuscuLAR EXERCISE The pleasure of exercise depending chiefly on nervous endowment . . The pleasure belonging to the on Peace ament There may be passive modes . : II. Sex. Elements of the love passion . : Characteristics of any strong special emotion . III. Orcanic Sensipitiry. Something additional to the Five Senses ‘ . How an excess of this aenaitahiey as HO Special case of Alimentary Sensibility : the Epicure TV. Speciat Senses. Taste and relish . Sme]l . : ; ; : 2 : ; Touch : its importance in the sensual temperament . Hearing ; Music and Elocution Sight ; summary of its sensibility . : Is hare an endowment for sensation in the hats ; V. Wownpver; the passion for the marvellous differs in individuals. 5 ; ; : ’ i VI. Terror and Courage. Nature of the state of Fear Elements of Courage. Animal, Emotional, and Intellectual courage . ; 4 : : ; VII. Tenner Emotion: Arrection. The emotional nature usually displays the tender feeling Tenderness modified by Energy and Intellect . VIII. Serr-tove, Senr-EstEem, &ec. Love of approbation involved in self- anita nod The Vain person : ; . . JX. Love or Power. Allied to many other passions PAGE 216 217 218 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Essential pleasure of power the rebound from im- potence. . : . : Modes of the eeolints . ; A feeling natural to all, but more or ye eibdied by the sympathies. ° Feeling caused by displays of tee ah Rane iCue Saitements. ‘ X. Irascrpiniry. On what secelinettite davandent Characteristic element, the pleasure of Malevolence . How is this accounted for 4 : : ’ XI. Emotion or Pursvrtr—Ptot-Interest, Probably rises and falls with Emotion generally . XII. Sympatuy. Not a mere emotional peculiarity The Intellect must be referred to for its explanation XIII. Frnt Art Emotions. Problem of the Beautiful Works of Fine Art touch a variety of sensibilities . Harmony the more especial effect of Art. : The Ludicrous: its explanation by reference to the sentiment of power. d : ‘ : . CHAPTER X. INTELLECT IN GENERAL. Distinction between Emotion and Intelligence broad, but yet the two pass into each other . : The first property of intelligence is DiscRIMINATION Sense of Agreement a mode of discrimination In all the senses there is scope for discrimination, the Intellectual quality, as well as for pleasure and pain, the Emotional quality : : Distinctions of character arising out of superior discrimi- nation . . . . Discrimination of Feelings of Moventent Delicacy of Hand, Voice, ; ‘ . : Muscular Sensibility of the Hye eeteedt in Sterr ation. Discrimination in the Senses. Taste and Smell . : Touch : roughness and smoothness. Weber’s observations Discriminative aptitudes of the Ear Music; Elocution ; Articulation ; ‘ ; : ; Cultivation of Didi power. Acquired discri- minations enter into every branch of culture 258 259 260 > Xv1 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Second fact of Intellect. Rrrentive property of the Mind Whether Retentiveness be Pronor -tohed 6 Disstintihintion It is probable that there is a quality of General Reten- tiveness. : : : . The manifestations and roaplts of sis General retentiveness may be combined with 16a in- equalities, as shown vith unequal discriminative power ; t Influence of the natin on the en eee of thé mind. . - Z Intellectual power and Hmotiotial sitelst aby not attaich equally to the same subject . . Association of Ideas a special case of Retentiveness Circumstances favouring the growth of associations. Third fact of Intellect. The IpeENntTIFYING force, or power of Similarity 3 : Retentiveness and this power do not rise and fall dopeltint We assume a general Identifying force, modified by local susceptibilities and special acquisitions The power of seeing Contrast not a distinct fact of cha- . racter - . . Manifestations of a mind highly adadwea ais Triallect in general . : : : , ‘ : ‘ Emotions of the intellectual man. Pain caused by incon- sistency . . : . Stimulus that this gives to the kearth for truth The Sciences exhibit the purest embodiment of intellect . Intellect either disports itself, or works for ends ° Scope afforded by Industrial operations . Test of the aptitude for Business . : , : Examples of the intellectual forces in excess: Bacon . Newton : : : ° ; . ‘ The negative of Ttelleoe Stupidity, its modes. : CHAPTER XI. INTELLECT FOR GOOD AND EVIL—PRUDENCE. Question connected with the true nature of Firmness Best to commence with the inquiry into Prudence . PAGE 260 261 262 272 273 274 275 276 280 281 282 TABLE OF CONTENTS, Xvil PAGE A good memory for Pain a fundamental fact of the In- telligence . : : A : . ‘ 282 So with Binet ; i . Sens Prudence and i uledah Srabcied by a Meicretee to this , ‘ 283 This memory better in some ABBE than Hie : 284 The sinning and repenting character : 285 The peculiarity of Steadiness of Purpose : : 286 Serenity of mind in the fluctuations of outward events . 287 The beau ideal of a philosopher involves these moral at- tributes. : . : ‘ . ‘ 288 CHAPTER XII. INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DISINTERESTEDNESS— SYMPATHY. An enlarged Prudence might include a great part of Con- science. ‘ , ° 6290 But there is in human nature rete an senent of eee restedness . AuezO To what foundation in the mand is thie to be Parerre (MG ae Tender Emotion strictly interpreted does not imply the good of others . : ‘ d : ib. Disinterestedness is, properly speaking, an Perera of our constitution . ; 292 It has to be reconciled with the eee teated fact of self- preservation : : 293 Sympathy another name for he same ae ab. Implies intellectual conditions ab. We must have had some experience of the nbs that we are to sympathize with . 204 We must also know the signs of feeling in others ib. Although the capability of sympathy be of intellectual origin, it does not follow that the disposition is so 295 There is another element required. Is that Love ? 296 Love added to intellectual aie does not explain the whole . ab, Sympathy may be dented as the susceptibility * fe pleasures and pains of others in the form of a fixed idea . ; ; : ‘ P “ : XVlil TABLE OF CONTENTS. All the elements of the mind have a modifying influence upon it. . . . . The intensity and the range of he ayia an im- portant fact of character CHAPTER XIII. SPECIAL INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS. The special manifestations of Intellect turn upon Local Susceptibility combined with General Power : Special characteristics as regards Feelings of MOVEMENT . The SENSEs, viewed intellectually . ‘ : The Muscular Feelings and Sensations are the Wee of our Knowledge . Difference between passive recipiency of impressions, and reproducing them in new combinations CHAPTER XIV. TALENT. Talent opposed to Original Genius. . ° : Elements of Talent in handicraft skill and erate execution . : The Sense of the Effect very r oontpl eae in the hive vocations, as Oratory . : : - , , Business Talent . : ° ‘ Importance of a strong foros of rhs end, as in ie Pru- dential aptitude . : ; ; ‘ ; The ends of Business. : The Knowledge-intellect rede Beateetan, Medicine The nature of the higher Taste, or Judgment, in Art and Practice : t : . 3 : : Talent for Science. What are the General and Local capabilities required ? 7 The Phrenological basis of explanation A susceptibility to symbolical forms not sneth for science ; it applies equally to written language M. Stanislas Julien, the Chinese Scholar, contrasted with Mr. George Bidder, the Arithmetician PAGE 298 299 301 302 303 304 3°5 ae TABLE OF CONTENTS. xix PAGE The emotional interest peculiar to Science ‘ Peary Mr. Bidder’s account of his Arithmetical faculty . a er tor The chief interest of science lies in the great compre- hensiveness of scientific truths. : 319 This interest must be accompanied with gueeTiogtaal foie’ ce 320 The useful applications of science are a motive to pursue it and also the best means of verifying it . ANS IT CHAPTER XV. GENIUS. Different meanings of the term ‘ genius’ é 322 Principal meaning corresponds to foitit ais or Tver eR There is a love of originality for its own sake . : on Ws The Intellectual force most concerned in original creation is Similarity, or the Identifying power : 325 Tt is similarity obscured by diversity, that makes the difficulty which all men are not alike able to overcome . : ° ° : : ‘ weed Genius in the Fine Arts. . a7 In some of the Arts, the explanation of genius ie poet in superior sensibility. Music . : ; rhe ets. Painting , . , : : : mig. ae The Actor on oe Stage Originality arising from the actor’s physical personality . : 320 Poetry implies certain sensibilities, as in the other GA. 330 Sensuous endowments of the Poet . : : : soph The Identifying power. Shakspeare_. : : oh ee The Genius of PRACTICE : : ; : 82 The unusual sensibility to the staal . i ; nl ea apeT Cromwell. His prudential or precautionary energy 4 BEE His sympathies ; the genius of Toleration . . - 336 What he was in the region of knowledge properly so called : : ‘ : 3 ‘ : smh te Genius in Science. Elements of the scientific mind heey The Identifying power especially involved in scientific discovery . ; tle Examples: Universal Citeietion Franklin’s discovers of the similarity of eentniite and electricity . . 338 — xX TABLE OF CONTENTS. The identifying power running wild : fantastic analogies ; Fourier and Oken ‘ : 5 ; ‘ é The corrective is verification . * r The scientific man has also to consider the ee which in his case is Truth : ; : 4 Point of agreement of genuine science and practice . Profound thought in all subjects implies the power of Identification . ; . : : Bishop Butler : : ; ; Contrast of Butler and Pape : : : PAGE 339 ab. ib. 340 341 342 343 CHAPTER T. THEORIES OF CHARACTER, LTHOUGH in the literature of antiquity there is ne- cessarily a great deal both of delineation and of ana- lysis of Character—the one chiefly in the poets and his- torians, and the other in the philosophers—the only work bearing this subject expressly as its title is a treatise of THEOPHRASTUS, the pupil, friend, and literary executor of Aristotle, and a man of wide attainments, as shown by the extent of his published writings. The treatise is a short one, and contains descriptions of thirty ‘Characters,’ all implying petty vices or weaknesses. As an illustration of Athenian manners and society the work is curious and valuable, being in that respect very much what an Athe- nian novel descending to us might have been ; there is less of exaggeration than we find in the comedies of Aristo- phanes. The following are the titles of the characters described :— Ethical Characters—Marks of Different Dispositions. 1. Dissimulation—Ironical Sneering—The Dissembler. 2. Flattery—The Flatterer. 3. The Proser. 4. Rudeness or Vulgarity. 5. Complaisance—The Man who seeks to please every one. 6. Shamelessness—The Man unscrupulous and indecent in act and speech. f- Garrulity—The Chattering Man. B THEORIES OF CHARACTER. . Story-telling—The Lying Newsmonger. g. Meanness—The Man who takes base advantages’ in 12. a Wy dealing. . Stinginess—The Miser. . Recklessness—The Man who takes pleasure in offending the tastes of others. Unseasonableness—The Man who acts without regard to the proprieties of the moment. . Officiousness—The Man of silly pretension and fuss. . Stupidity. . Discourtesy. . Superstition. . Querulousness—The Man who finds fault with favours or well-meant proceedings. . Mistrust—The Man who suspects every one. . The Man of dirty habits or unwholesome person, which he rather exposes than hides. . Vexatiousness—The Man who gives annoyance on small matters. Petty Vanity—The Man who makes great parade about trifles. . Sordid Parsimony. . Boastfulness. . Insolent Presumption. . Cowardice. . Oligarchical Pride and Contempt of the People. . Juvenile Habits in advanced Age. . Evil Speaking—The Man who slanders others. 29. Preference and sympathy for criminals and discredited men. 30. Shabbiness in avoiding outlay, or in bargain-driving. It is obvious that there is here no attempt at a system of Human Character, even of the ethical varieties: and no attribute properly intellectual is included, excepting under CHARACTERS OF THEOPHRASTUS, a 14, ‘Stupidity, CAvacsOnotac). There are duplicates of the same quality, and many kinds wanting. The self-regarding disposition in money matters is set forth under several heads (g, 10, 22, 30). Rudeness or Vulgarity, Discourtesy, Shamelessness, Recklessness, Unseasonableness, Dirty Ha- bits, make an allied circle. The modes of Pride and Vanity appear in a number of titles (13, 21, 23, 24, 26). But such obvious and everyday dispositions as Indolence, love of good living, doting fondness for objects of affection, Quarrelsomeness, Factiousness, &c., appear nowhere. The manner of delineating the various characters will be best seen by selecting two specimens. Character 8. Aoyorrottac—Story-telling. ‘Story-telling is the fabrication of false narratives and exploits, according to the liking of the story-teller himself. This man is of such a disposition, that if he meets a friend, he immediately assumes a soft and smiling manner, and proceeds to ask, “ Whence are you coming? Have you anything to tell me?” Or, “Have you anything new to say about such and such a matter ?? And then he proceeds to ask, “Is not there something talked of still newer ? Verily the reports abroad are favourable.” Forthwith, without letting his friend answer, he exclaims—“ What ? Have you heard nothing? Then I expect to set before you a feast of news.” Hereupon, pretending to have heard from some person actually present in the battle, a soldier, or the slave of the fifer Asteius, or the contractor Lycon (for he always has some such unimpeachable witness to appeal to), he recounts what he says they have told him, that Polysperchon and King Philip Aridzeus have defeated Cassander in battle and taken him prisoner. When he is asked whether he himself believes the story, he says that the fact is openly proclaimed in the city, the report is gaining strength, and all the details harmonize ; that every B 2 4A THEORIES OF CHARACTER. one says the same about the battle and the quantity of blood spilt in it; and that he derives farther confirmation from the change of countenance visible in the leading officials. He pretends, moreover, to have got a private hint, that these officials had kept concealed in the house a messenger from Macedonia, who had arrived four days before with the full account. Having gone through all these statements, he next—what do you think !—bursts into a natural strain of strong feeling, exclaiming, “ How unlucky Cassander is! What a sad fate! Here you learn the real worth of Fortune! Still he has had his share of power!” He then adds: “But this is a secret which no one must know except yourself!” Having said so, he runs to every one in the city, recounting to each the same story. ‘To me it has always been matter of surprise, what these persons intend by their inventions. For they do not only lie, but come off without profit, or even with loss. Several of them, in recounting to a crowd of bystanders at the bath- house, have had their clothes stolen ; others, while gaining land-battles and naval-battles in the portico, have been non- suited at law through absence from the court ; some, while storming cities in their talk, have lost their suppers. Their occupation is a very wretched one! What portico, what workshop, what portion of the market-place is there, in which they do not pass the day, tiring out the hearers whom they thus bore to death with their lying stories !’ Character 25. AsAiac—Cowardice. ‘Assuredly cowardice would seem to be a giving way of the soul, arising from fear. The coward is a sort of man, who, when sailing at sea, fancies the promontories to be piratical vessels. If the sea becomes troubled, he inquires whether there is any man aboard who has not been ini- tiated in the mysteries. He lifts up his head to look around, EXAMPLES FROM THEOPHRASTUS. 5 and then asks the steersman, whether the ship is halfway across, and what weather he thinks that Zeus promises: he tells his neighbour that he has had a dream which alarms him: he then strips and gives his tunic to his slave: he even entreats to be put ashore. When serving as a soldier on land, he calls on his comrades who are advanc- ing to the charge, and bids them halt near him to look around, saying that it is difficult to distinguish which are the enemies. When he hears the battle-cry and sees men falling around him, he tells his neighbours that in his hurry he had forgotten to take up his sword. Then, run- ning back to his tent, he sends forth his slave with orders to look out where the enemy are. He hides his sword under the pillow, and spends a long time pretending to search for it. Presently he sees in the tent one of his com- rades brought in wounded ; he runs to cheer him up, takes him under the arm, and carries him to the couch; there he tends him, sponges him over, and sits by his side to keep the flies from his wound. In short, he does everything rather than fight the enemy. Sitting thus in the tent while the trumpeter is sounding the charge, he exclaims: “ Con- found you, for this endless giving of the signal! Cannot you let the man get a little sleep?” Then, being himself full of blood from the wound of the other, he meets the sol- diers returning from battle, and tells them how that he at his own peril has saved the life ofa comrade. He introduces the fellow-citizens and fellow-tribesmen of the wounded . soldier to look at him; at the same time asseverating to each of them that it was he who, with his own hands, car- ried the soldier to his tent.’ LA Bruyeére both translated the ‘ Characters’ of Theo- phrastus, and composed a separate work having reference to the society of his own country and time. His ‘Caractéres’ made a great sensation on its first appearance, and has 6 THEORIES OF CHARACTER, ever since been esteemed one of the classics of French literature. Properly speaking, this book is a satire-on~ mankind in general, and certain classes of men and women in particular, having that slender basis of truth which even satire requires, with the exaggerations and distortions requisite to give piquancy to this style of composition. We may compare it to the satires of Horace and Juvenal, and to a whole class of literary productions that derive interest from bringing human nature into ridicule or con- tempt. Like these other writers, La Bruyere brings to bear in his delineations great powers of style, expressive, terse, and epigrammatic phraseology, to which his popu- larity must be in great measure ascribed. He satirizes men as a whole, women as a whole, the great, the wealthy, the court, the town, ‘la mode,’ the wits, &c.; interspersing now and then a remark less discreditable to mankind than the general strain of his attack. Selection in a short space is not easy, and the following must not be taken as perfect representative specimens of the entire work. ‘Why impute to men that women are not instructed ? By what laws, by what edicts, by what rescripts, have they forbidden them to open their eyes and read, to retain what they have read, and to give an account of it either in their conversation or their writings? Is it not rather the fact that women have established themselves in this habit of knowing nothing, either from the weakness of their constitutions, or from the inactivity of their minds, or from the care of their beauty, or from a kind of frivolity that hinders them from following continuous study, or from the talent and genius that they have for finger accomplish- ments merely, or from the distractions caused by domestic details, or from a natural distaste for laborious and serious things, or from a curiosity altogether different from that which satisfies the intellect, or from tastes of another sort than that of exercising their memory? But to whatever LA BRUYERE. " cause men are indebted for this ignorance in women, they may consider themselves happy that those who already govern them in so many ways, have this advantage the less over them.’ ‘If science and wisdom are united in one subject, I think no more of sex, I admire; and if you tell me that a sen- sible woman hardly cares to be scientific, or that a scientific woman is hardly sensible, you have already forgotten what you have been reading, that women are only turned back from scientific studies by certain defects: understand, then, that the less they have of these defects the more sensible they will be, and that thus a sensible woman will be only all the fitter for becoming scientific, or that a scientific woman, being such because she has been able to overcome so many defects, is only all the more sensible. —Des Femmes. ‘Men speak of themselves in such a manner as only to acknowledge their small defects, and moreover those which imply in them great talents and qualities. Thus, they com- plain of their want of memory, contented nevertheless, with their great sense and good judgment; they receive the reproach of absence of mind and dreaminess, as if the reputation of having a fine intellect was thereby accorded them ; they say of themselves that they are awkward and can do nothing with their hands, much consoled for the loss of these minor talents by their wits and those gifts of the mind that all the world acknowledges in them; they make the avowal of their idleness in terms which imply always the fact of their disinterestedness, and that they are cured of ambition; they do not blush at their uncleanli- ness, it is solely negligence in small matters, and supposes in them application only to solid and essential things.’ ‘We seek our happiness out of ourselves, and in the opinion of men whom we know to be flatterers, insincere, without justice, full of envy, caprice, and prevarication : what folly !’ 8 THEORIES OF CHARACTER. ‘A great soul is above injury, injustice, pain, and ridi- cule; and would be invulnerable if it was above compas- sion. —De Homme. ‘In a bad man there is nothing of which a good man may be made; praise his views and his projects, admire his conduct, exaggerate the cleverness with which he uses the most direct and the shortest means to achieve his ends; if his ends are bad, prudence has no part in them, and where prudence is wanting, find greatness if you can.—Des Jugements. ‘This same religion which men defend with heat and zeal against those who hold contrary views, they alter to their own mind by peculiar sentiments; they add to or they take away from it a thousand often essential things, as they see fit, and they remain firm and unpersuadable in this form which they have given it. Thus, to speak popu- larly, we may say of a whole nation that it lives under the same belief, and that it has but one religion; but to be exact, it would be truer to say, that it has many beliefs, and that nearly every member of it has his own special . one. —Des Esprits Forts. Thus, these two authors, having adopted ‘Character’ as /a subject, nevertheless, are very far from pretending to a Philosophy of Character. Indeed, previous to Phrenology, no one ever appears to have risen to the conception of such a philosophy. Reserving the Phrenological scheme for a full examination, I will here allude to some more recent at- tempts to lay out the ground to be studied in the depart- ment of the Human Character. CHARLES Fourier, the well-known socialist, has based his socialistic system upon an analysis of the Passions, and a classification of characters thence derived. His method, however, instead of being a profound examination of the ultimate elements of the human mind, is the employment FOURIER'S CLASSIFICATION. 9 of fanciful analogies to embody our-feelings and tendencies. Referring to the defects of previous attempts to classify the passions, he says:—‘ Which of them are right? None. Here is the secret of their vacillations; they are ignorant of the fact that the passions are.distributed like a_tree, which beginning from the trunk or focus, Gives subdivisions progressive in number. Consequently he considers that he has the merit of indicating a division that can be carried out, in the strict Natural History plan of successive sub- divisions. These he carries out as follows :—1st, classes ; and, orders ; 3rd, genera; 4th, species ; 5th, varieties ; 6th, diminutives; 7th, tenuities, minimities. He has in his classification 3 classes, 12 orders, 32 genera, 134 species, 404 varieties, besides the main trunk. The trunk com- prehending the whole is ‘unityism in harmonic develop- ment; but along with this there is a trunk root, ‘egoism in subversive development.’ The three classes are—first,- the group of the Senses (five in number); secondly, the Affectives (four in number); thirdly, the Distributives (three innumber). The individual members of these groups amount to twelve, which are his Orders, and the heads of his detailed exposition. The Senses he recognises according to the usual plan, but his manner of handling and discuss- ing them is quite original. The four Affectives are Friend- ship, Love, Familism, Ambition; the three Distributives are Emulation (the love of intrigue, the ‘ Cabalist’), Alter- nation (the love of variety, the ‘papillon,’ or butterfly), Cumulation (the aggregation of many pleasures in one). These twelve orders of passions make a complete series, because the musical notes are twelve in number ; accord- ingly he assigns to each a note, or a place in the musical scale. Fourier had the same fascination for numbers that possessed the Pythagoreans of old, and many moderns like- wise, as, for example, Kepler. After elucidating, according to his own quaint and peculiar fashion, these various 10 THEORIES OF CHARACTER. : Orders, he discusses what he calls the Potential Scale of Characters, in other words, the marking of degrees and combinations, essential to the theoretical perfection of any scheme. He doubles his 404 Varieties, after adding one to take in the main trunk, and thus makes 810 characters, each provided with the twelve radical pas- sions, but more or less subject to the ascendant influence of one or several. ‘I call dominant the passion that holds the rudder of a character. The dominant of the miser Harpagon is his ambition, of which avarice is a shade or specific development.’ Now, as every dominant has a variety of shades which must be discriminated and named, we have a gamut of tonics, each shade being the tonic passion. A character may have several dominants, but the greater number of persons have only one. He assigns 576 out of 810 as of this last kind, and calls them the pas- sionate populace. Those with two dominants, called digynes, are less numerous ; those with three, trigynes, still less frequent, and so on. The highest is the pen- tagyne, and is only one solitary individual of the whole number. There are also, however, some polyniats, or am- biguous characters who have no dominants, but only ralliants, or passions that rule occasionally. | The whole method of Fourier’s composition is a profu- sion of analogies and analogical phrases of his own coining, quite useless for the explanation of a subject, but presenting often very quaint combinations. He has the peculiarity of an original and independent turn of thinking in the regions of speculation where few men have ever deviated from the received commonplaces, as in Ethics and Society. His views are now made accessible in the translation by the Rey. John Reynell Morell, of his work on the ‘ Passions of the Human Soul.’ MR. SAMUEL Balt.ey has aptly indicated the position of SAMUEL BAILEY’S CLASSIFICATION. 11 the present subject as a branch of the whole Science of Man, or Anthropology; and has also given what he con- siders the natural distribution of” the subject, as the fol- lowing extract will show :— ‘In reference to the division concerning Individual or Personal Character, I may remark that it would be advan- tageous on several accounts to keep it distinct from Psy- chology, which, when confined to its proper objects, is chiefly occupied in describing, classifying, and bringing under general laws, the phenomena of consciousness com- mon to all mankind, and deals with Individual Character only incidentally and briefly—too briefly for the importance of the subject. ‘The expediency of making the latter a separate depart- ment of inquiry, will be more readily admitted if we con- sider that character is constituted not by peculiar qualities, but chiefly by the proportion in which mental properties common to the individual with the rest of his species are manifested. ‘The elements of a man’s character may be stated to be mainly the following :— ‘I. The predominance of certain feelings, propensities, and desires in his mind over others which, although existing there, are less marked, such as fear, hope, resentment, the love of approbation, conscientiousness, curiosity, benevo- lence, ambition, and so on; all of which may be found united in infinitely varying proportions. ‘II. His being able to perform certain intellectual opera- tions better than other operations, such as-remembering better than imagining or reasoning, and conversely reason- ing better than remembering, ‘III. His being able to perform these and other intel- lectual operations much better in respect to certain ob- jects than in respect to other objects. Thus one man will recollect, imagine, and reason about mechanical matters 12 THEORIES OF CHARACTER. more readily than he will perform those operations in the case of mental phenomena ; and another will remember ma- thematical figures, and draw conclusions respecting them, with more facility than he will perform similar acts in reference to the incidents of common life, to music, or to poetry. ‘One important ingredient in the aptitude for particular arts or sciences, is being able to form clear and steady men- tal representations of the objects in which they deal, when such objects are not present. To grasp them firmly in conception is manifestly indispensable both to devising new combinations and to reasoning on their results whilst yet untried.* ‘IV. The energy or feebleness of his volitions—his acts of willing... The observation is anything but new, that we frequently see men of strong intellect combined with weak powers of volition, and vice versd. Coleridge was a noto- rious example of the former. | ‘V. His physical endowments, or. the qualities of his bodily constitution, the perpetual consciousness of which (not to mention other effects) enters largely into the com- position of his character. Of this remark Lord Byron may be cited as an illustration. The contrast between the mental effects of a consciousness of great muscular vigour on the one hand, and muscular feebleness on the other, has been well drawn by Cabanis. —(Letters on the Human Mind, ii. 265.) While concurring in the main in the distribution here chalked out, I should be disposed, as will be afterwards seen, very nearly to invert the order of topics.) The PHY- SICAL CONSTITUTION, placed last, would seem more na- turally to come first; then would follow the WILL, ex- * “Tt is the want of this power of clear conception which, as it appears to me, leads writers into mixed metaphors, as well as other both rhetorical and logical incongruities.’ JOHN STUART MILL ON ETHOLOGY. La plained as the natural energy of the disposition, without any regard, in the outset at least, to the force of the motives that stimulate and guide it, which motives are chiefly the FEELINGS intended to be included under Mr. Bailey’s first head. A full detail of these would succeed to the consideration of what is peculiar to the region of the Will. And the varieties of INTELLIGENCE, mentioned under the second and third divisions, would be discussed last of all. Whether anything would be gained by keep- ing up those two divisions,—namely, on the one hand, the operations of the intellect, such as Remembering, Reason- ing, Imagining; and on the other, the subjects operated upon, as Mathematical Figures, Mechanical Constructions, Natural History, Poetry, the incidents of Common Life,— I do not here inquire. But this is not the only place where we shall derive benefit from Mr. Bailey’s clear and sagacious remarks. Mr. Joun Stuart MILL, in his System of Logic, has in- dicated as a field of important inquiry the subject called by him Ethology, or the laws that govern. the.formation of character, individual and national. This supposes that the ~-analysis and classification of characters are already made, and has for its object to determine the effects of cirewm- stances in bringing about the varieties actually occurring. Ethology is the sctence which corresponds to the art of Education, in the widest sense of the term, including the formation of national or collective character, as well as individual. Such a science cannot be said to exist at the present time ; so that the Educator’s art is an exclusively empirical one. CHAPTER II. CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. HRENOLOGY is no longer a subject of party heat or violent altercation. Men can support or impugn it with the composure becoming a purely scientific controversy. We are now able to form a measured estimate of its pre- tension, allowing for what good we think it has done, and rebutting what we may consider the overstrained pretensions of its advocates. More than one criticism can be referred ~ to of this strictly judicial character. The number of points relating to the human mind that have been raised by Gall and his followers is so great that one might, in discussing them, go over nearly the whole debateable ground of mental science. It was their intention that this should be so, for in their subject they profess to include everything that belongs to a philosophy of human nature. They came into competition with a philosophy already existing, which they drew upon to a certain extent, and then wholly superseded. The following passage from the chief English expounder of phrenology expresses the position taken with reference to the previous metaphysical philosophers :— ‘If, however, we inquire what progress has hitherto been made by metaphysicians in ascertaining the — primitive mental powers, and in rendering the philosophy of men interesting and practically useful to persons of ordinary understandings, we shall find a deficiency that is truly deplorable. From the days of Aristotle to the present time, the most powerful intellects have been directed with the most persevering industry to this department of science ; COMBE ON THE METAPHYSICIANS, Ae and system after system has flourished, fallen, and been forgotten in rapid and melancholy succession. To confine our attention to modern times:—Dr. Reid overturned the philosophy of Locke and Hume; Mr. Stewart, while he illustrated Reid, yet differed from him in many important particulars ; and recently Dr. Thomas Brown has attacked, with powerful eloquence and philosophical profundity the fabric of Stewart, which totters to its fall. The very ex- istence of the most common and familiar faculties of the mind is debated among these philosophers,’ And further : ‘A system of mental philosophy pretending to be true ought not only to unfold the simple elements of thought and of feeling, but to enable us to discover in what pro- portions they are combined in different individuals. In chemical science one combination of elementary ingredients produces a medicine of sovereign virtue in removing pain ; another combination of the same materials, but differing in their relative proportions, brings forth a mortal poison. In human nature, also, one combination of faculties may pro- duce the midnight murderer and thief—another, a Franklin, a Howard, or a Fry, glowing with charity to man.’ ‘In thus surveying the philosophy of the human mind, s at present exhibited to us in the writings of philosophers, ‘we perceive—/irst, that no account is given of the influence ‘of the material organs on the mental powers; and that the progress of the mind from youth to age, and the pheno- mena of sleep, dreaming, idiocy, and insanity, are left un- explained or unaccounted for by any principles admitted in their systems ; secondly, that the existence and functions of some of the most important primitive faculties are still in dispute ; and thirdly, that no light whatever has been thrown on the nature and effects of combinations of the primitive powers, in different degrees of relative proportion,’ —(Combe’s System of Phrenology, 5th edition, pp. 59, 62.) te 16 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. Phrenology is thus set up, in contradistinction to the pre- existing systems of mind, as rendering a full account, for the first time, of the influence of the brain upon mental life ; as affording new lights in the very perplexing inquiry as to the primitive or elementary faculties and feelings ; and as constituting a theory of human character. It is one object of the following pages to consider how far these pretensions have been realized. | And first, as to the connexion between mind and the material organs, and more especially the brain. It is a fact not to be disputed that the systems of Reid, Stewart, Brown, and indeed of metaphysical writers generally, took little or no account of the nervous system and its connexion with our mental manifestations. It is also equally true that, notwithstanding occasional references on the part of physiologists and others to the connexion of mind with bodily members, the phrenologists were the first to bring forward in a prominent manner, and to defend against assailants of every kind, the doctrine that the mind is © essentially dependent, in all its manifestations, on the brain, being more vigorous as that is more fully developed, and dwindling under cerebral deficiency or disease. They have marshalled an array of facts in support of this position so formidable and cogent as almost to silence opposition. When they began their labours, it was not, as now, ‘ad- Mitted as the result of all observations, and a fact on which nearly all physiologists are agreed, that the brain is the part of the body by means of which all the powers or faculties of the mind are manifested.’ If there be any subject connected with humanity more interesting than another, it is this no longer doubtful rela- tionship, which lies at the foundation of the theory of mind, and is vitally involved in the practical questions of our well- being. The considerations and facts adduced in its favour ought to be among the most widely diffused portions of MIND CONNECTED WITH BRAIN. 17. human knowledge; and the researches undertaken for throwing new lights on the matter deserve the most marked attention and encouragement. It is requisite not merely to establish a general connexion between mind and brain, but to follow out, if possible, the precise relationship of the different feelings, faculties, and manifestations, to the special parts or divisions of the brain, and to the other members that bear a part in the same circle of activity. On the one hand, Physiology, experimenting on the properties of nerves and nerve centres ; and on the other, mental science (whe- ther called Psychology or Phrenology) collecting, classifying; describing, and analysing the facts of mind—the sensations, emotions, volitions, and the processes of intelligence—should co-operate in tracing home the alliance between the two aspects of our being. By such means alone can we dispose of any doubts that may still be entertained as to whether the whole of our mental nature is thus closely knit with bodily organs ; for it will then be seen, by the method of residues, whether there be any phenomena that do not depend upon that support. It is not only incompetent, but wholly unphilosophical even in attempt, to resolve mind into brain, nerve, and muscle; the things are radically dis- tinct in their nature, as heat is different from gravity, or light from solidity ; the true aim of the inquirer is to find the laws of their relationship, as we trace the laws connect- ing heat and light with solid, liquid, and gaseous matter. To take a few of the illustrations supplied by the author of the System of Phrenology. “The fact that the mental phenomena of which we are egnscious are the result of mind and brain acting together, is further established by the effects of swooning, of com- pression of the brain, and of sleep. In profound sleep consciousness is entirely suspended ; this fact is explicable on the principle of the organ of the mind being then in a state of repose ; but it is altogether inconsistent with the s , 18 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. idea of the immaterial principle, or the mind itself, being capable of acting independently of the brain ; for if this were the case, it could never be interrupted by any material cause. In a swoon, blood is rapidly withdrawn from the brain, and consciousness is for the moment obliterated. So also, where part of the brain has been laid bare by any injury inflicted on the skull, it has been found that con- sciousness could be suspended at the pleasure of the sur- geon, by merely pressing on the brain with his fingers, and that it could be restored by withdrawing the pressure. A few such cases may be cited :— ‘A man named Jones, recorded by Sir Astley Cooper, was deprived of consciousness by being wounded in the head, while on board a vessel] in the Mediterranean. In this state of insensibility he remained for several months at Gibraltar, whence he was transmitted to Deptford, and sub- sequently to St. Thomas’s Hospital, London. Mr. Cline, the surgeon, found a portion of the skull depressed, tre- panned him, and removed the depressed part of the bone. Three hours after this operation he sat up in bed, sensation and volition returned, and in four days he was able to get up and converse. The last circumstance he remembered was the capture of a prize in the Mediterranean thirteen months before.’ ‘A writer in the Medico-Chirurgical Review mentions that many years ago he had “frequent opportunities of witnessing similar phenomena in a robust young man, who lost a considerable portion of his skull by an accident which had almost proved mortal. When excited by pain, fear, or anger, his brain protruded greatly, so as sometimes to disturb the dressings, which were necessarily applied loosely ; and it throbbed tumultuously, in accordance with the arterial pulsations.” "—(Combe, vol. i. pp. 13-18.) These cases merely carry out into more decided promi- nence the well-known fact that mental fatigue, exhaustion, SIZE OF BRAIN. 19 and disease are felt in the head, as indigestion is felt in the stomach. It is further ascertained that the products of a waste are increased when the mind is more than marily exerted.' The kidneys are mainly concerned in removing from the blood the saline and other matters arising from the waste of nervous substance; and their secretions are greatly augmented during times of mental excitement ; while chemical analysis proves that the pro- ducts on such occasions are derived from the nervous tissue. Another leading argument which the phrenologists have been especially concerned to develop and press home, is the / connexion of mental power with the size of the brain. \ After showing by a number of parallels derived from the/ other animal organs that size is a usual concomitant of power (in the bones, muscles, lungs, liver, organs of sense, nerves of sense and motion, &c.), Combe adduces the fol- lowing facts touching on the main question. ‘First—The brain of a child is small, and its mind weak, compared with the brain and mental faculties of an adult. ‘ Secondly—Small size in the brain is invariably a cause of idiocy. Phrenologists have in vain called upon their opponents to produce a single instance of the mind being manifested vigorously by a very small brain. / ‘Dr. Gall has laid it down as a fact to which there is no exception, that where the brain is so small that the hori- zontal circumference of the head does not exceed thirteen or fourteen inches, idiocy is the necessary consequence. “ Complete intelligence,” he remarks, “is absolutely impos- sible with so small a brain; in such cases idiocy, more or less complete, invariably occurs, and to this rule no excep- tion ever has been, or ever will be found.” In the Journal of the Phrenological Society of Paris for April, 1835, Dr. Voisin reports observations made upon the idiots under his C2 20 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. care at the Parisian Hospital of Incurables, in order to verify the assertion of Gall in the passage above quoted ; and mentions that he found it substantiated by every one of his cases. In the lowest class of idiots, where the in- tellectual manifestations were null, the horizontal circum- ference, taken a little higher than the orbit, varied from eleven to thirteen inches, while the distance from the root of the nose backwards over the top of the head to the occipital spine was only between eight and nine inches, When the size varied from fourteen to seventeen inches of horizontal measurement, and eleven or twelve in the other direction, glimpses of feelings and random intellec- tual perceptions were observable, but without any power of attention or fixity of ideas. Lastly, when the first measurement extended to eighteen or nineteen inches, although the head was still small, the intellectual mani- festations were regular enough, but deficient in intensity. In a full-sized head, the first measurement is equal to twenty-two inches, and the second to about fourteen inches,’ ‘Deficiency of size in the brain is not, however, the only ~cause of idiocy. A brain may be large and diseased, and mental imbecility may arise from the disease ; but, as above shown, although disease be absent, if the size be very defi- cient, idiocy will invariably occur. ‘Thirdly—Men who have been remarkable, not for mere cleverness, but for great force of character, such as Buonaparte, Franklin, and Burns, have had heads of un- usual magnitude. ‘Fourthly—It is an ascertained ‘fact, that nations in whom the brain is large possess so great a mental superiority over those in whom it is small, that they conquer and oppress them at pleasure. The Hindoo brain, for example, is considerably smaller than the European, and it is well known that a few thousands of Europeans have subdued and keep in subjection millions of Hindoos. The brain of DIFFERENCES OF SIZE BRAIN. PAY the aboriginal American, also, is smaller than the European, and the same result has been exemplified in that quarter of the world.’ : In the Caucasian or Indo-European race, the capacity of the head or cranium ranges from 75 to 109 cubic inches ; while in the Mongolian race, to which the Chinese be- long, the range is 69 to 93 inches.—(Keith Johnston’s Physical Atlas.) ‘ All other circumstances being alike,’ says Dr. Sharpey, ‘the size of the brain appears to bear a peers aon to the mental power of the individual,—although instances occur in which this rule is not applicable. The brain of Cuvier weighed upwards of 64 oz., and that of the late Dr. Abercrombie about 63 oz. avoirdupois. On the other hand, the brain in idiots is remarkably small. In three idiots, whose ages were sixteen, forty, and fifty years, Tiedemann found the weight of their respective brains to be 19? 0z., 25? 0z., 224 oz.; and Dr. Sims records the case of a female idiot, twelve years old, whose brain weighed 27 0z. The weight of the human brain is taken at about three pounds (48 oz.’)—(Quain’s Anatomy, 5th edit., p- 671.) The conclusion that the brain taken in the gross is indis- pensable to the workings of the mind, is not without important practical bearings. The treatment of insanity and mental derangement is now regulated on this prin- ciple. But it is desirable to go farther, and specify, if we can, the more particular relations of the two classes of phenomena. It would be interesting to know if the dif: ferent modes of the mental manifestations—feeling, will, intelligence—have different seats or portions of the cere- bral mass assigned to them. It is also curious to inquire how the brain is affected during mental processes. More- over, there are other parts of the animal system involved in the more energetic emotions; the features, limbs, and | 92 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. the body at large, are active under excitement, and their participation ought therefore manifestly to be included among the material accompaniments of mind, The position taken up by the phrenologists on this point is well known. Whey hold that there is a plurality of faculties in the mind, and a corresponding plurality of organs in the cerebral organization. They consider that the one fact—the plurality of mental faculties, suscepti- bilities, and endowments, which can scarcely be disputed —is a strong presumption of the other. To be angry is so different from casting up a sum in arithmetic, that we can hardly suppose the two different functions otherwise than differently located in the brain. Then we find cases of partial idiocy and partial insanity, implying defect or derangement of a single faculty, the rest being in an average condition. So, they remark that dreaming is a partial wakefulness of the faculties, some being active while the rest are suspended, pointing to a similar con- clusion. Also the experience of partial injuries of the brain, which are said to have occurred without injuring the intellectual faculties, implies that all the parts are not equally concerned in all the functions. Then, the brain itself is a very complicated organ, or rather an assemblage of distinct organs. The spinal cord, medulla oblongata, pons varolii, cerebellum, corpora quadrigemina, optici thalami, and corpora striata, are all different from the convoluted mass marking the great body of the hemi- spheres in man; this convoluted mass is very manifestly broken by one fissure, the Sylvian; and although in the main there is a continuity in the convolutions adverse to the notion of this part being clearly partitioned to suit a plurality of faculties, yet a phrenological eye sees still room for the distinct allocation of separate regions to separate manifestations of feeling or intelligence. ‘It is admitted,’ says Combe, ‘that strong lines of demarcation between the PLURALITY OF ORGANS. 23 organs are not seen in the brain; but those persons who have either seen Dr. Spurzheim dissect the brain, or have minutely attended to its impressions on the skull, will support me in testifying, that the forms of the organs are distinguishable, and that the mapping out is founded in nature. To bring this to the test, the student has only to observe the appearance of any particular organ in a state of large development, the surrounding organs being small: the form will then be distinctly visible’—(System, vol. 11. p. 402.) After all, however, the main proof of this position con- sists in that series of observations-commenced by Gall, and continued by ot ‘others, connecting strong specific manifesta- tions of character with fulness. or size of particular parts of the head. . This is the distinguishing doctrine of phreno- logy, to which the foregoing doctrine, common to physiolo- gists generally, is merely subsidiary. Gall having been first struck (with the coincidence in the case of Language, followed it out in other faculties, and in the course of a laborious life, devoted to observation with this view, ascer- tained the mental attributes connected with nearly every part of the brain, excluding of course the base, which is not accessible. His disciple, Spurzheim, completed the list ; and although there are some differences among phre- nologists in some points, and certain organs are still left as doubtful, we are now presented with a tolerably full enume- ration of the feelings, faculties, and propensities of the human mind, with their several locations in the cerebral mass. ‘ Granting all this to be well authenticated, the- obvious 4 and valuable consequence is a means of ascertaining the ~ human character (and even the lower animals are not ex- cluded from the application of the method) by the form and size of the head, independently of those observations as to people’s actual conduct hitherto relied upon, with perhaps 94, CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. the addition of a certain slight reference to physiognomy. It is the introduction of a new instrument of diagnosis, like the stethoscope, or chemical analysis, in medicine. Moreover, there is implied in it a scheme of the constituent elements of character which must be presumed to be accu- rate, being, so to speak, founded in nature, so that we have thus for the first time a SCIENCE OF CHARACTER. No pre- vious theorists, in laying out the map of the human mind, could pretend to such a confirmation of the genuineness of _ their lines of demarcation as the phrenologists find in the coincidence between their analysis and the divisions of the brain. Other mental philosophers, looking at the distinct nature of fear and affection, of memory and invention, of a musical ear and a delicate smell, classed them as separate and primary elements of our being ; but if they could have found that each had its own compartment of the brain allotted to it, they would have considered that the analysis was clenched and put beyond all further question. Here, then, is the vantage ground of the phrenologist: It is this consideration that seems to justify him in saying that his science is really the first analysis of the mind itself that has anything like a basis to go upon. Phrenology, therefore, is even greater in what it implies than in its more immediate and obvious application to deciphering men’s characters by their heads. But if so very much hangs upon the discovery of Gall, the evidence for his affirmations needs to be all the more irrefragable. The coincidence between organ and faculty ought to be established throughout by the severest and most reliable proofs. If there had been a pre-existing analysis so conclusive as to satisfy and conciliate all philo- sophers, to which the organology of the brain adapted itself, there would have been less to establish, and perhaps a smaller amount of confirmation might have sufficed in the case. Seeing, however, that the organology has revolu- PHRENOLOGY AS A SCIENCE OF MIND. 95 tionized the analysis itself, we must exact a rigid authenti- cation of its details. The phrenologists make comparatively little appeal to the method of the older philosophers in analysing the mind—the self-consciousness of the individual inquirer: they occasionally advert to this method, but they consider that their science has provided a more excellent way. They have brought to a rapid and certain conclusion the tedious and unproductive labours of the other inquirers. Upon a method of a diagnosis they have built a science of character, and on that a SCIENCE OF MIND. The adherents of the older psychology are thus boldly challenged to surrender their citadel to the new invader. That they have not done so ere nowis attributed to various motives, different from conscientious adherence to truth. But the following passages from Mr. Samuel Bailey’s cri- tique on Phrenology will show that there is still something to be said for the older method, even after the advent of the new :— ‘At the outset it may be admitted that the connexion thus shown to exist between the size of a certain part of the skull, and an excessive manifestation (say) of fear might be usefully employed in aiding us to regulate our inter- — course with our fellow-men, to select individuals for parti- cular offices, to choose professions for young people, to shape appropriately our instructions and discipline in the educa- tion of children ; and, in a word, to appreciate the character of both ourselves and others. ‘These are doubtless exceedingly useful results in matters collaterally related to mental philosophy; but it is plain that the connexion between the emotion and the particular conformation of the skull or brain, although it may thus be serviceable as an indication of character, does not enlighten us at all as to the nature of the feeling, its various modifi- cations, the circumstances which generate, ferment, prolong, and allay it; the conduct to which it leads; how it affects 26 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. other states of consciousness, such as reasoning and ima- gination, and is affected by them, nor yet how it operates on the nerves and other tissues of the body. All these things —what the emotion is, its distinctive peculiarities, how it arises, subsides, and departs, and its moral and physical results—must be gathered from our own conscious expe- rience, assisted as to some of the particulars mentioned by external observation directed to the conduct of others, as well as to physiological phenomena. It is knowledge which never could be gained by measuring or manipulating or scrutinizing the cranium, or anatomizing the brain. The fact of the connexion may throw light on a man’s character as to the possession of cautiousness or the want of it, as to his constitutional susceptibility to the class of feelings allied to it or implied in it, but none as to the nature of the quality or the feelings. The philosophy of fear—an emo- tion which has played so important a part in government, in social conduct, and especially in religious inculcation, since the first records of the human race, and the effects of which, when excited for moral purposes, are as yet very 1m- perfectly understood—would not be advanced by it a single step. The whole of the assistance rendered by the esta- blishment of the connexion in question resolves itself, I repeat, both in this and in all other instances, into the cir- cumstance of enabling us, from an external physical indica- tion, to form a rough estimate of the probable degree in which the mental characteristic indicated is naturally possessed. ‘It may be added, that the establishment of the organ of cautiousness, as it is styled, serves to corroborate most completely the previously ascertained fact, that timidity is not the product of external circumstances, but a constitu- tional quality, varying in intensity and excitability in dif- ferent individuals ; and it serves also to show the futility of PHRENOLOGY NOT THE WHOLE SCIENCE OF MIND, 27 expecting that an appeal to it for any purpose will have a Em result in all cases \ ‘On the most favourable view of the whole matter, the \ utmost which can be said on the side of phrenology is, that | ji presents us with an assemblage of organs indicating, to a limited extent, and in a manner more or less vague and indeterminate, the mental qualities of their possessor ; but as to what these qualities are (which is purely an affair of consciousness), the organs themselves can obviously give us no information whatever. The latter are simply outward physical signs, empirically established, of inward mental characteristics. ‘Our knowledge of the so-called faculties, feelings, and propensities, is primarily constituted by the recollection of various states of consciousness through which we have passed, combined in some instances with our observation of the conduct of others ; and these mental states we arrange and classify under convenient names. It is only after they are known and classified that it is possible to connect them empirically with any external appearances as indications of their being possessed; and these external indications, al- though they may be established by the most indubitable proofs, cannot in any way modify or add to our knowledge of those things which they indicate. ‘This description of phrenology undoubtedly circum- scribes its province within very narrow bounds, and is widely at variance with the views of those philosophers who regard it as presenting us with a tolerably complete philo- sophy of mind. __ | ‘The endeavour to establish a connexion between cranial a Bonnets and mental characteristics, has undoubtedly ; | been serviceable not only in raising the importance of the | ‘nervous structure as an object of investigation, but in | ” . . . . ; | bringing to light many curious facts in human nature; and. / . Va seen ee 98 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. in collecting a great number and variety of grounds for concluding that there are original differences, frequently of an extraordinary kind, in the constitutional qualities of individuals and races. ‘ Although it is true that all these facts might have been observed without reference to the brain, or its configuration, or its exterior covering, still to phrenology as actually pro- secuted must be awarded the merit of strongly directing general attention to many of them; and also of hastening, confirming, and disseminating views regarding the consti- tution of human nature which, notwithstanding they were once warmly contested, and are yet not universally received, the philosophical observer, without such assistance, would doubtless have finally reached. ‘A century or half a century ago, it seems to have been a prevailing notion that men are not naturally adapted by mental constitution to one pursuit more than to another ; but that when any such peculiar aptitude is evinced, it is due to the direction given by the mind to casual events or surrounding circumstances. In unison with this view, it was expressly maintained by Dr. Johnson, in a well-known passage, that the true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to a particular direction. ‘Phrenology, while failing in its more ambitious at- tempts, has greatly assisted in dissipating such erroneous views of human nature, and by the instances which, partly in the mistaken estimates of its own proper scope, it has industriously brought together, of extraordinary aptitude for music, mechanical invention, calculation, language- learning, and other pursuits, as well as of peculiar prone- ness to certain emotions and sentiments, it has widely spread the conviction that there is an infinite variety in the degree and combination of constitutional qualities by which men are adapted to as great a variety of functions PURPORT OF THE SCIENCE OF MIND. 29 and fortunes. —(Letters on the Human Mind, second series, pp. 206-215.) The foregoing extracts express with remarkable justness and precision the exact relationship of phrenology to the science of human nature as conducted by philosophers of the other school; indicating clearly, what it is the aim of the present discussion to bring out in greater fulness of detail, the necessity of a distinct examination of the mind itself, by the methods of self-consciousness, observation, and physiology combined, in order to constitute a mental philosophy. The affirmation to be proved is that phreno- logy, as hitherto exhibited, is at best but a science of character, and NOT a science of mind, as pretended; and / that even as a science of character it is essentially de- | pendent upon the degree of improvement realized by the science of mind independently cultivated. The SCIENCE OF MIND, properly so called, unfolds the mechanism of our common mental constitution. Advert- ing but slightly in the first instance to the differences between one man and another, it endeavours to give a full account of the internal mechanism that we all possess alike—of the sensations and emotions, intellectual facul- ties and volitions, of which we are every one of us con- scious. By an effort of self-examination, the primary instrument of the psychological inquirer, we discriminate these, one from the rest, classify those that resemble, and find out which of them appear simple and which com- pound. We pay special attention to the distinction be- tween the primitive and the acquired powers, and study with minuteness and care the processes of education and acquisition. We look at the laws whereby sensations are transformed into ideas, and thoughts give rise to other thoughts; in other words, the operations of Intelligence have a chapter devoted to themselves. The obscure pro- 30 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. cesses of the Will can be divined only by laborious intro- spection; the observation of other minds (children and animals especially) although also an important instrument, needs a constant reference to self as the interpreter of what is indicated. Thus the elements of Feeling, and Intelligence, and Activity, common to us all, are laid out in systematic detail; and thereby we pave the way for that study of their various degrees of development in individual minds, constituting individual characters. Of course, while engaged in the complicated problem of the conscious states—the laws and processes—of wniversal mind, we are liable to drop out of view the individual differences, perhaps even to overlook them so far as to misstate their amount; and may hence incur just rebuke on that score from those who look specially at the neg- lected side of the case. Still, that part of the work has to be well done at the peril of leaving everything un- done. It will require a detailed examination of the phreno- logical analysis of mind and character, in order that the justness of these general affirmations may be evident. It will then be seen that the special method of phrenology— the reference to the development of the cranium—cannot dispense with the other method, and has in part failed from the very attempt to dispense with it. One may fully concede the propriety of constructing a system, or science, of the elements and laws of CHARACTER, while denying that this should swamp the science of MIND as treated by the recognised methods. We go farther, and declare that the subject of the estimation of character will be depen- dent for its advancement in a great measure on the pro- gress made in the other direction. XY To proceed, then, to the main question: How have the phrenologists analysed and laid out the entire compass of THE TEMPERAMENTS. 31 our mental susceptibility and our various faculties, and what are the merits and defects of their method ? Their principal position is, that the different energies of the mind are associated with distinct portions of the cere- bral substance, and vary in degree as those are large or small. There are, however, certain circumstances that modify the effects of mere Size—what are they? They are, to quote from Combe, ‘constitution, health, exercise, excitement from without, and in some cases the mutual influence of the organs.’ ‘The question naturally presents itself, Do we possess any index to constitutional qualities of brain ? ‘There are some constitutional qualities which can be judged of only by knowing the qualities of the stock, or race, from which the individual under examination is de- scended? I have observed a certain feebleness of the brain, indicating itself by weakness of mind, without de- rangement, in some individuals born in India of an English father and Hindoo mother. The tinge of colour and the form of the features indicate this descent. I have noticed feebleness and sometimes irregularity of action in the brains of individuals, not insane, but who belonged to a family in which insanity abounded. I do not know any external physical indication of this condition. The Temperaments indicate to a certain extent important constitutional quali- ties. There are four temperaments, accompanied by diffe- rent degrees of strength and activity in the brain—the lymphatic, the sanguine, the bilious or fibrous, and the nervous. The temperaments are supposed to depend upon the constitution of the particular systems of the body; the brain and nerves being predominantly active from consti- tutional causes, seem to produce the nervous temperament; the lungs, heart, and bloodvessels being constitutionally predominant, to give rise to the sanguine; the muscular and fibrous systems to the bilious; and the glands and 32 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. assimilating organs to the lymphatic.—(System, vol. 1. P- 49:) Without dwelling upon the remark suggested by this passage, that already we have a large disturbing element brought in as modifying the inferences to be made from size, being at the same time only one of several elements (health, exercise, excitement, and mutual influence of or- gans are still to be allowed for) difficult to appreciate precisely as to their influence—it deserves to be considered whether this scheme of temperaments is the simplest and most direct mode of stating the characteristics of the various bodily organs participating in, or in any way affecting, the mental manifestations. Would it not be better in each case to describe, as well as can be ascer- tained, the peculiar condition of every one of these organs seriatim, drawing the proper inference, without inquiring which of the four temperaments the case falls under? There seems to be here a needless retention of an ancient and clumsy device. It was supposed by the physicians of antiquity that there were four primary component elements of the human body, namely, blood, phlegm, and the two kinds of bile, yellow and black, and the preponderance of one or other of those in different persons produced the different tem- peraments. A constitution superabounding in blood was of the sanguine temperament; if phlegm was in excess, the phlegmatic was manifested; the yellow bile gave the choleric, and the black bile the melancholic or atrabilious temperament. Dr. Gregory was the first to add to these the nervous temperament, which the phrenologists in- cluded in their classification. The doctrine of tempera- ments was applied to explain, or at least to express, the tendencies to different diseases. The sanguine or full- blooded constitution is more liable to severe inflammatory disorders, but can sustain the application of bloodletting EXAMINATION OF BODILY ORGANS. °* BT) and other strong remedies, while the phlegmatic constitu- tion is liable to such illnesses as grow out of low vital energy. The suitability of individuals to different modes of life was also indicated by temperament. The choleric character disposed men to be precipitate, impetuous, and courageous ; the melancholic was identified with timidity, caution, deliberation, and suspense of judgment. If we take the chief organs of the human system as described by physiologists, and ascertain the precise cha- racter or diagnosis of each in any individual, the entire delineation will be the constitution of that individual according to the spirit in which the temperaments were first conceived, but with an improvement in the style of procedure corresponding to the more advanced state of our knowledge. The physician, on examining a patient for the first time, looks not only at the organ diseased, but at the organs generally, so as to form an opinion of the consti- tution asa whole. When a young man presents himself for the Indian service, all his organs are examined with reference to his power of enduring a tropical climate. The medical referee of an Assurance office makes a thorough diagnosis of a person perfectly healthy, in order to judge of the power of vitality apparently belonging to the aggre- gate that makes up the constitution. The stomach, the lungs, the heart, the muscular development, are all passed in review, and an opinion formed of their soundness and power of endurance. It may be that none of these exami- nations comes up to the full estimate of the temperament for every purpose, but they might be so conducted as to leave nothing undescribed that was within reach of investi- gation. The range and instrumentality of medical dia- gnosis at the present time are known to be remarkably ex- tensive, and might be used for giving certificates of tem- perament to the healthy, as well as for probing disease. Coupled with an examination, by phrenology or otherwise, D 34 : CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. of mental development, they would indicate precisely the strength and weakness of the individual with reference to every function or situation of life: by their means every one might follow out with strictness the celebrated and seldom complied-with Delphic injunction. Such being the case, let us review the leading organs of our framework, remarking on their different forms of de- velopment, not with an eye to pathology or medicine, but as regards their influence upon Mental Manifestations, pro- perly so called. Instead of following the order of an anatomical or phy- siological treatise, which begins with the bones, joints, and muscles, we shall commence with the organ most concerned with mind, having that for its peculiar function. It is admitted, then, by phrenologists as well as by others, that the NERVE SUBSTANCE, besides varying in quantity, may differ in quality in different individuals, it being found that two brains of nearly equal size yet manifest very un- equal power. There is nothing improbable in this, looking at the analogy of the other organs. We sometimes find a man of small muscle much stronger and more enduring than. one of larger make. Some of the most muscular men on record were little in their general build. Jack Sheppard is an example. Of course, the general rule must be that the highest vigour is a result of quantity and quality com- bined; but as to nerve, there are instances of very small heads surpassing in power the average size. And, to refer to the lower animals, when we look at the mental develop- ment of the ants, their aptitude for a complicated social existence, and consider how very little nervous matter there is in their organization, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that the quality of their brains, or ganglia, is very much superior to the nervous substance in man or in animals generally. The largest ganglion in the ant is only a fraction of a pin’s head in size, and yet with this they are capable QUALITY OF THE NERVE SUBSTANCE. 35 of acting in an organized community and exercising fore- thought to a surprising degree.* How, then, shall we mark and characterize quality of nerve as distinct from quantity? In speaking of the ner- vous temperament, Combe uses the following phraseology : It is ‘recognised by fine thin hair, thin skip, small thin . . . . muscles, quickness in muscular motion, paleness of counte- | nance, and often delicate health. The whole nervous sys- tem, including the brain, is predominantly active and ener- getic, and the mental manifestations are proportionally vivacious and powerful.’ A portrait of a highly nervous person is given to correspond with this description. But both the language and the picture are overdone. They express not simply the properties belonging to a fine quality of brain, but a nervous system feeding itself at the ex- pense of all the other organs of the body. The subject of the pictured representation has besides a very large intel- lectual head. What we want is to know the difference o manifestation of two heads very much alike in size, but obviously differing in quality, and the better of the two not operating to the ruin of all the rest of the bodily functions. It is an assured fact that the brain contributes to the vitality of the stomach, lungs, heart, &c., as well as sustains the proper mental manifestations; now a brain of good quality, not called upon for more than its due in respect of mind, ought to contribute to organic vigour ; at all events, we are not in the first instance to infer a powerful brain from a weak circulation, or enfeebled muscles. We know it * Virgil, in concluding his account of the various operations of the bees, in the fourth book of the Georgics, gives a poetic rendering of this thought. ‘To the bees belong a part of the divine mind and draughts of the ether :’ ‘ His quidam signis, atque heec exempla secuti, Esse apibus partem divine mentis, et haustus Aetherios, dixere.’ D2 _— 36 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. to be a frequent result of a great determination of vital force to the brain to impoverish the other vitalities, and we must be prepared to allow for this at the proper stage ; but we should begin by stating the appearances irrespective of that particular consequence. The chief point of quality, properly so called, is that hinted at by Combe in the phrase ‘ quickness in muscular motion.’ Brains agreeing in size, may differ in the pro- fuseness of nervous energy discharged into the muscles, which will be apparent by energy and rapidity of move-) ment, and great tension of the features and organs of ex-) pression. A higher quality of nerve will manifest to a higher degree the nervous property of originating and sus- taining motive power; and the indication of this will be the liveliness of the movements, gestures, and tones of the voice. But there may be two different interpretations put upon those appearances ; they may be considered either as implying a greater abundance of the nervous discharge, or a greater tendency to temporary excitement, followed by exhaustion. We can judge according to the state of the facts which is the true explanation. Both are referable to the quality of the substance, apart from quantity ; the one is strength, the other weakness. A really powerful brain discharges, in a constant stream, greater energy than a less powerful ; everything done at the spur of a mental stimulus is done with increased ardour and demonstration. The actions are more determined, the expression more animated. Farther, we may have energy with or without great quick- ness, although quickness naturally follows as a consequence of internal momentum. Whether quickness be a pure result of energetic discharges, or be a special mode of energy, there can be no mistaking the indications of it. The rate at which nerve currents pass along the nerves has _ been ascertained to be about two hundred feet a second. This determines the rapidity of voluntary movements, or EFFECTS OF QUALITY. 37 the interval between a stimulation of the will and the corresponding execution, as when we lose our balance and recover it in time, or catch something falling. Now it is very likely, indeed almost certain, that the rate of trans- mission of nervous power varies in individuals, and in the same individual at different periods of life. The quickness of the young and slowness of the old may be referred to this circumstance. The bodily strength and endurance depend partly on the proper power of the muscles, and partly on the stimulation received from the nerve centres ; and when great efforts are put forth the nerves are what are principally drawn upon. A strong nervous system can put forth more of this effort when occasion requires it, and can thereby sustain the energies for a longer time after the muscles have reached the point of exhaustion. It is on those occasions, when we are called upon to make protracted exertions at the instance of motives applied to the mind, that a superior quality of brain makes itself apparent, although then too the result may come of quantity. Hence we can always extort more work in a push from a well- endowed cerebral system than from the average run of human beings. In the field of battle it is well known what nerve counts for, muscle being on a par. We are also familiar with the difference between a sudden and tem- porary discharge, the effect of excitability, and a more enduring flow; which last, however, may be owing to size, while the other is more indicative of quality. Observation is never at a loss to discriminate the peculiarity in question when two persons unequally constituted in that respect are placed together. The one executes with quickness, em- phasis, and decision, what the other does languidly or not at all. In an encounter the one is easily superior, unless there be great odds in everything else. What we have now sketched is perhaps the only mark of quality that can be decisively tested, and the only mode 38 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. by which we can, with assurance, separate it from quantity. The delicateness of susceptibility that makes one person more than usually open to every kind of impression, may likewise be looked upon as an endowment of quality, but the phrenologists would ascribe it in most instances to quantity. They would say that the existence of large organs of the special faculties, where the susceptibilities lie, is the proper way of accounting for it. Large tune makes the person sensitive to music, large colour to pictures, and soon. Nevertheless, they are forced to admit a ‘tempera- ment of genius’ in those cases where more than ordinary power is manifested, the mere fulness of the corresponding organ not amounting to an adequate explanation. This is merely another way of putting forward quality as an ele- ment to be admitted into the calculation. Newton had good organs of number, causality, &c.; but they bore no proportion to his genius in the departments of mathematics and physics. The supposition of a special delicacy of fibre in such instances is, however, not free from difficulties. For all analogy leads us to suppose that the nervous substance in the same system is likely to be of a uniform quality: we find this to be so in the other tissues, the muscles, the skin, &c. Now genius is often very partial, as the phre- nologists remark in their argument for a plurality of organs and faculties: so that we should have to assume an ele- vated quality of nerve for some parts of the brain and an ordinary quality for the rest. The peculiarity discussed in the preceding paragraph is supposed to be general for all the manifestations of mind, but the one now considered would have to be limited, to suit the limitation of the indi- vidual’s specialities. Notwithstanding the dilemma thus arising, it is but reasonable to suppose that there are great variations in the quality of nerve besides that which shows itself conspicuously by intensity of manifestations generally ; and these variations of quality are likely to be concerned ORGANS OF THE SENSES. 39 even in the specialities of genius, however little we may be able to explain the apparent contradiction of supposing two qualities of material in the same head. Theoretical completeness would require us to advert to the organs of the SENSES in connexion with the brain. Each organ may have a character peculiar to itself, owing partly, but not wholly, to the related nerves and nerve cen- tres. There is in all of them a surface for receiving the impressions in the first instance, varying for the different senses according to the nature of the action that takes place. In the Eye we have a lens and black pigment, which may not be of the same quality in all constitutions. Yet if the lens is transparent enough, and sufficiently well shaped, to give distinct images, this is all that we need, so that any peculiar brilliancy of the eye is to be esteemed merely as a beauty in the person, and not as aiding vision. It is not in our power to say whether any part of the in- tellectual faculties founded in vision depends on varieties of the pigment ; we can only presume that this, like every other tissue known to us, is various in different subjects; the consequences of such variation being unknown. The same remarks are applicable to the surfaces and mechanism of the Ear ; we cannot tell how far the differences in regard to delicacy of hearing and fine discrimination of sound, in musie or in speech, may be due to the organ, and how far they are owing to the nerves and brain. Neither can we make out distinctions of quality in the surfaces of Smell or Taste in the human subject. In dogs, we can under- stand the effect of a very great extension of the smelling surface in the nose, but we are not able to observe inequa- lities in this respect among human beings. It might be imagined that the Skin, the organ of Touch, in contrast to the others, is peculiarly open to observation and lable to great differences of texture; still it is doubtful if any of those observed differences of delicacy apply in the matter 40 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. of mental susceptibility or discrimination. A fine skin, like a clear eye, charms the beholder, but there is no proof that it confers tactual endowment. The cause of this may be partly in the skin (although to a greater extent in the number of the nerve filaments distributed in it), but there is no outward appearance that can be referred to as the indication of it. Passing now from the chief organ of mind, on which so little satisfaction is attainable, we may remark on the MUSCLES and their allied members. The bony and mus- cular system may be large, and of good quality in addition, constituting the athletic frame. A very high quality of muscle in a small or middling stature may be classed under the same head. Besides fitting the individual for bodily toil and endurance, there are specific consequences of a mental kind resulting from such a constitution. In the first place, the power of endurance is extended to the mind in so far as mental exertion involves the muscles, which happens in such avocations as military command, teaching, | speaking, public business, experimental research, natural history, and many other things ; while bodily exercise, unat- tended with fatigue, is the best known sedative for cerebral excitement, as well as being a principal means of increasing the vital energy of the system at large. But in the second place, the highly muscular constitution gives a direction to the tastes and pursuits, by disposing for the more physi- cally active kinds of employment, and for such recreations as involve muscular expenditure. The phrenologists have no organ for the love of field sports and out-of-door exer- cises ; an obvious omission on their part; but although the taste for these must be in part cerebral, it also goes very naturally along with a robust muscular frame. Undoubtedly, therefore, the muscular development of an individual is a proper subject of notice in giving a diagnosis even of the mental peculiarities, not to speak of the large share of im- ) MUSCLES.—DIGESTION. 41 portance attaching to it, when we embrace in our view the whole man. The bilious or fibrous temperament of the phrenologists points to it in a good state of development. Still we must never lose sight of the fact that, like any other organ in excess, the muscles may draw nourishment to themselves at the expense of the brain, and that, accord- ing to the average constitution of human beings, there is generally some weakness accompanying the unusual vigour of any one of the functions. The DIGESTION deserves special mention in its bearing on the present subject. A good digestive system is the basis of vigour in the other parts, including the brain. It sus- tains mental application, and seems to be a principal con- dition of good animal spirits, and the hearty joyous temperament. Asin the foregoing instance, too, it natu- rally (although not necessarily) leads to the love of good eating, and must therefore be taken along with the alimen- tative organ in determining the epicurean propensity. As regards the power of mental labour, a good digestion is even of more importance than good muscles, Nor must we omit an estimate of the LUNGS, which when large and of good texture contribute in a decisive manner to the general vigour, by supplying the oxygen, or aerial food, requisite for the assimilation of the solids and liquids. A broad, deep chest almost of itself makes a powerful frame. The opposite is a source of one of the prevailing weaknesses of the human species. But weak chest is notoriously dif- ferent from weak stomach in not depressing the mental tone or the animal spirits, being in fact compatible with the sanguine and cheerful temper. The action of the HEART is still farther removed from immediate influence on the mind, although determining no less surely the vigour and duration of life, Overstrained cerebral activity preys sometimes on the stomach, at other times on the lungs, and with still more insidious steps upon | 42 CLAIMS OF PHRENOLOGY. the heart, and needs to be resisted by great natural soundness as regards them all. - What we have said respecting these several organs in a high condition implies the opposite cases. The tempera- ment, according to the original meaning of the term, is the precise mixture or combination belonging to each individual, which must present an unlimited variety. There may be —one vigorous, and all the rest weak; one vigorous, the rest average; two vigorous, and the others weak; none preponderating ; and all good, all middling, or all bad, and so on through endless combinations. beings, is made up of a certain degree of prudence, with an ( admixture of disinterested impulses. We do not find either | prodigies of consummate prudence, or miracles of self- denying disinterestedness. A certain moderate share of each, the proportions of the two being very various, enters into the average Englishman, Frenchman, or German. We have searched into the foundations of far-sighted and resolute self-interest, and have found them to be in the Intellect ; the question now arises, have the disinterested motives the same foundation, or may we have recourse to the Emotions in giving an account of them ? If there be any one of the well-recognised emotions of the human mind, that would prompt to disinterested con- duct, it would be the Tender Feeling, to which we ascribe pity, benevolence, and the home affections. Certain objects excite our love and tender regard, and we in consequence cherish those objects, and seek their welfare in all possible U2 292 INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DISINTERESTEDNESS. ways. Such would seem the obvious state of the case. But a closer scrutiny will qualify this rendering of the effects of tender feeling. It cannot be disputed that if anything produces in us a strong liking, whether a flower or a friend, a child or a heap of money, we shall protect and care for that object, for the sake of the pleasure it brings ; but this pleasure is our own, not the pleasure of the child or the friend. Mere liking attends only to itself, and does not necessarily imply devotion to another self. There is a form of love extremely common, whereby people court other persons merely for their own pleasure, and no longer, just as they live in a house so long as they find it agreeable, and quit it when that ceases to be the case. This is all that would arise out of mere tender feeling, considered as the result of a charm inspired by engaging qualities. Far from being a disinterested affection, nothing is more purely and strictly interested than such a state. We should not be led by any amount of mere love to sacrifice self for the object of that love ; there is, in fact, a sort of contradiction in the very notion of it. Liking implies that something pleases us, and is sought for that reason ; but to renounce our self and incur pains, is to act on the very opposite principle, and would seem to imply that we are moved not to what we like, but to what we dislike. Disinterestedness is as great a puzzle and paradox as ever. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is a species of irrationality, or insanity, as _ regards the individual’s self; a contradiction of the most _ essential nature of a sentient being, which is to move to ‘pleasure and from pain. \ In renouncing this fundamental principle of our mental constitution, we are always on the verge of absurdity and lawlessness. For when a man has ceased to care for his own welfare, or to act for his own pleasures, why should he care for anybody else’s welfare ? He has disowned happiness as a pursuit, and to be consistent, he ought to extend the same measure to all around him. . s SYMPATHY. 293 And yet Disinterestedness is a fact of our constitution, and without it there would be nothing that we should call great virtue in the world. Perfect forethought as regards self would be the utmost stretch of meritorious conduct. People have always been found ready to sacrifice themselves for others, and in so doing have been acting under motives reckoned perfectly natural. It is accounted the glory of humanity to possess these contradictory impulses. Still we must treat the ‘vivre pour autrui’ as an exception to the only sane principle of conduct, which is for every being to look to its own pleasures and pains; a brilliant exception it is true, something of the splendide mendaa, but never to be made the rule without even suicidal consequences. In acting for the good of others, we must still retain the origi- nal and more fundamental principle of acting for our own good, otherwise we lose all measure of what is good for any one, and all propriety in working to secure that. It de- mands an effort of rational consideration to adjust these two conflicting elements—so to seek our own good as to do full honour to the ‘first law of nature, and yet on occasion to remit the principle in favour of seeking the good of others. Sympathy is only a different name for Disinterestedness. The essential feature of the phenomenon is the assumption of another person’s state of mind, and the acting upon that as if it had originated in one’s self. What is termed Pity, is the broadest and most conspicuous manifestation of it ; there being some strong apparent distress that the spectator cannot help understanding, and which once taking posses-___ sion of his mind, he must do something to alleviate. What is the nature of this peculiar impulse to go out of self, and _) inhabit, as it were, another’s personality? _ p Whatever else may go to complete the phenomenon there must be certain intellectual conditions at the com- mencement. The state of mind suggested to us must be one that we have had experience of, and can well remem- 294. INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DISINTERESTEDNESS, ber, on being reminded of it in any way. I cannot sym- pathize with a distress different from any pains that I have ever known: a child cannot understand the disappointments of mature life. Not only must there be past experience, there must also be, exactly as in prudence, a tenacious hold of that experience, a good ideal persistence, so that we may conceive it fully without having it present in the actual. I may have once felt the pain of toothache, but if I have utterly forgotten it, I cannot sympathize with a person now suffering from that ailment; excepting mdeed, in that general way, that one can imagine an acute pain without hitting its exact nature. We need, therefore, to have had experience of the good and‘evil that we are expected to sympathize with, together with a tenacious memory for that experience, such as avails us m directing and regulating our own conduct. The only other requisite of an intellectual kind, is a knowledge of the signs of other men’s feelings, or of the expression, gestures, and language whereby they indicate what passes within. As regards the commoner varieties of human pleasure and pain, this is an acquirement that begins early and soon attains a tolerable maturity. The child knows the signs of acute distress, or of lively enjoyment, at a very early date ; and being taught the names of the various human feelings, as fast as it has experience of them—joy, grief, anger, hatred, pride, remorse,—is suffi- ciently versant in the language of feeling to comprehend whatever is intelligently represented. If one enters butim- perfectly into the elaborate description of the state of mind of a hero of romance in an interesting situation, it is not so much from ignorance of the language used, as from inexperi- ence or madequate recollection, supposing one has had ex- perience of the feelings that are set forth. Thus, then, a well-remembered experience of the conscious states that we ourselves have passed through in the course of our lives, is the real hasis of the power of sympathy, and is of course the CONDITIONS OF SYMPATHY. 295 very same basis which serves for prudence, steadiness of conduct, and serenity of temper in our own individual career. Whether or not this be the whole of the requisites, it 1s certainly a part. He that can distinctly foresee all the pains of having undertaken more work than he can perform, so as to possess a strong motive against repeating the mistake, must have had a good recollection of his former experience on that head, and by possessing such a recollec- tion, he has to a certain extent the power of conceiving what another man is actually suffering in such a predica- ment. No doubt perfect sympathy implies something more than one’s own recollection in a similar case ; there should be a power of allowing for difference of character, but that only shows that the refinements, and the superior gifts, of sympathy are begotten of a still greater force and culture of intelligence. If I bring up my own recollection of wounded pride to enable me to condole with a friend suffer- ing from that cause, and if I can adapt my own experience exactly to the case, from knowing that the sufferer is pecu- liarly sensitive on that point, I possess a more than common intellectual endowment in the matter of sympathy, and comprehension of other men’s minds. Of course, in that case, I should be all the more urged in my disinterested endeavours, to devise some soothing application for the wound that I so fully appreciate. It will, I think, be amply conceded that the capability of sympathy is an Intellectual fact, expanding as intelli- gence in this particular application is expanded. It is not so obvious that the possession of the power leads to the actual employment of it ; indeed, there is evidence to the contrary of this. The men that have the largest aptitudes are those that observe and study human nature, both their own feelings and the feelings of others; for example, poets, historians, orators, politicians, mental philosophers, &c.; but are these the men that really do enter largely into the exact mental 296 INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DISINTERESTEDNESS. condition of those about them in the way of sympathizing with joys and sorrows? Have we not rather the fact that Goethe, for example, kept out of the way of suffering, because it pained and unhinged him ; proving plainly that he had the greatest possible aptitude for taking in the miseries of his fellows, but positively declined the occasions when he might be called upon for that purpose? So a political leader or skilful orator must know men thoroughly, and must be able to conceive all their strong feelings; but he does not, therefore, as a matter of course show a sympa- ‘thetic disposition. He may use his knowledge simply for his own ends. The same remark extends to the meta- physical philosopher, in whom ability may equally exist without being applied in the way now described. It is clear, then, that something must be added to the intellectual capability to constitute effective sympathy. We have already seen that love does not of itself make sympathy; but may it not be the wanting element in the cases now supposed, the motive force that enables the intellectual gift, otherwise barren, to bear the fruit of genuine fellow-feeling? Having this ready power of entering into the pains and pleasures of other beings, and having a strong love for some one or more, we ought, it would seem, as a matter of course, to devote ourselves to the lively apprehension of their pains and pleasures in par- ticular. Now, undoubtedly this is the case. Love és an inducement to sympathy, and hatred the opposite. Any one skilled by natural gift or special study, in reading character, in knowing from the outward symptoms and circumstances, what a person most probably feels in a given situation, and also engaged with some strong special affection, will be sure to display an effective sympathy for the object of that affection, far beyond what the same love would inspire in one poorly versed in the observation of human beings. So far, then, we have something that would supply SYMPATHY A KIND OF FIXED IDEA. 297 the missing link. Still, I do not think that this goes far enough to account for the facts. It leaves out that wide operation of sympathy towards beings that excite in us no special affection. It is well known that men have spent their lives in doing good for the least loveable of their race; and that philanthropists are not always men of great warmth of natural affection. The power of love explains the home sympathies—the consideration paid to the feelings of children and intimate friends and associates—but it will not explain sympathy at large. Wecannot, if we were ever so affectionate, love all the outcasts of all lands, or the criminals in every jail in Europe. It is the essence of philanthropy to take up with those that nobody loves, and that not even the philanthropist himself can be said to love, except by a very rude figure of speech. There is a principle of tender regard in the human breast, that does not permit us to exterminate even what is hateful and loathsome, that puts an arrest upon malevolence, and revolts from cruelty. So that the intellectual capability of knowing men’s feelings, even when coupled with love, still falls short of sympathy. It would be useless to invoke any other special emotion. We seem to be driven, after all, upon some intellectual property, which one might describe as follows, It is a~ fact of the human mind, whether ultimate or resolvable | into others more general, that when we are in any way / made to feel or know that another being is in pain, we are! arrested by that very circumstance, in fact, take possession of, and are unable immediately to shake off the impression. | The pain becomes for the time our own pain, and we 7 upon it as if it were so. Whatever we should do for ou own relief, we are prompted to do for the relief of the real sufferer. There is a power in the state of pain (or pleasure), witnessed as affecting another being, no matter who, to seize upon our mental attention and regard, to become a~ 998 INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DISINTERESTEDNESS. fixed idea, which we must act out, just as we act out any present or remembered pain attaching to ourselves. It is a property of human beings to be affected in this way, irrespective of love or hatred or any emotional cause, although these other influences greatly modify the effect ; and it is also true that men are by nature wnequally affected in this way. If we are unable to resolve the phenomenon, we must for the present account it an ultimate suscepti- bility, greater in some constitutions than in others, like the sense of colour, or of tune, or the aptitude for numbers or geometry. If existing in a high degree, and accompanying that knowledge of mind above described, it renders one eminently and extensively sympathizing; without the knowledge, its sphere is limited, but its operation still intense within the individual’s limits of cognition. An un- cultivated person with the tender-hearted endowment, the tenacity for pains and pleasures as manifested by others, will sympathize deeply with the more obvious distresses only, with poverty, illness, family afflictions, or with any marked demonstrations of pain.* Perhaps, however, like the melancholy of Jacques, sym- pathy may be compounded of many simples. It would not be an arduous task to show that all the leading attributes of the mind affect it in one way or another. To goas far back as the purely physical condition of the system: very robust health is known to be adverse to it, by making one less acquainted with pain and misery, and less dependent upon other human beings for solace and comfort. Abundant * In a former chapter (p. 112), I conceded to Phrenology the likeli- hood of regarding the tender-hearted disposition, when generalized to the utmost, as an ultimate fact of the constitution, for which a local habitation might reasonably be looked for in the brain. In a matter where the Psychological analysis is subtle and obscure, and where the sentiment concerned is one of great prominence in the mind, the well- established concurrence of a cerebral development with instances of the quality in a high degree ought not to be rashly set aside. SYMPATHY VARIOUSLY MODIFIED. 299 Spontaneous Energy likewise operates unfavourably, since we are thereby more disposed to go out in action than to imbibe impressions. An energetic temper may take up philanthropy as a means of venting itself, but the determi- nation of the system to the energizing mode draws it off from wide and various susceptibility to the external world of human beings. The Emotional temperament, on the other hand, is well adapted to respond to the signs of joy and woe in other beings, from its own natural proneness in that direction. Persons so constituted are usually of a tender-hearted disposition, at least as regards the more obvious and intelligible causes of pain or delight; they very often display a profuse generosity, whose failing is to be too little discriminating. The special emotion of love, as we have seen, isin the right direction so far as it goes; while the egotistic emotions—gain, vanity, pride, power, malevolence—are all counter to sympathy. The Intellect supports it in various ways. In so far as we are observing, receptive, acted on from without, instead of being given to pour out strength from within, we are open to the signs of other men’s feelings in common with other outward agencies ; the sound of a groan, the sight of a grief-smitten countenance, seize hold of the receptive mind and will not let it go. We may have a special sensitiveness to these effects, as we have so many other modes of special sensi- bility. But whether or not these or other causes, are capable of resolving the phenomenon, the best form of expressing it is, probably, that given in the preceding paragraph. The questions to be asked are: How far manifested pain or pleasure can take possession of the mind as an operative fixed idea, to the exclusion for the time of our own proper concerns; and what is the range of our susceptibility to the sufferings and joys of living beings ? Is the mind naturally insensitive to the cry of pain and the voice of pleasure, or so bent on pursuing exclusive ends as 300 INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF DISINTERESTEDNESS. to give these utterances no abiding hold, or so deficient in the power of knowing human nature, as to be seldom aware of what others feel ? No questions are more pertinent when we are making inquisition into character. I have already maintained that we must look here for the sources of Conscientiousness, in so far as that is not an elevated and far-sighted prudence, which society, evidently aware of the precarious and para- doxical nature of disinterested action, is always striving to render it, by supplying the rewards that the conscientious man does not bargain for. To be always up to the mark in the discharge of duty, we must either have a lively and enduring sense of the punishment of neglect, or an equally lively and enduring fixed idea of the pains that will be incurred, or pleasures lost by some of our fellow-beings. Our minds need to be well stored with these apprehensions of pain and pleasure in order to be conscientious, very much as one must have a store of words in order to be eloquent, or of the experiences of trade in order to drive a good business. The analogies of conscience, as of prudence, are thus in the Intellect, although they make a department of their own. CHAPTER XIII. SPECIAL INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS. (oer adverted to the comprehensive attributes of INTELLECT— Discrimination, Retentiveness, Similarity, —and have dwelt upon the two great departments of our moral nature, that seem to be related to our intelligence no less really, than the commonly understood operations of memory and reasoning, namely, Prudence and Balance as regards self, and Disinterested behaviour as regards others. In passing now to the special manifestations of intellectual power, it will be found that previous discussions have left comparatively little, in the shape of new burdens to be imposed upon the reader’s patience and attention. These various manifestations turn either upon local suscepti- bilities, such as Tact, Musical Ear, eye for Form, &c., or upon these in combination with the general attributes of this part of the mind, especially Retentiveness and Similarity. As regards the local susceptibilities, it was impossible to follow Phrenology without doing full justice to them, it being a principal merit of the phrenological school to have sought them out in detail. It is left to us rather to point out, how the explanation of the higher manifestations of intellect halts, by being too exclusively dependent on the plan of assuming unequal sensibility in these local organs. - The SENSES have already been reviewed in their Emo- tional aspect, or as sources of our pleasures and pains. We must now look at them in the Intellectual aspect, that of discrimination and retentiveness of their impressions ; 302 SPECIAL INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS, - and if we do not take with us also the power of recog- nising likeness in the midst of unlikeness, it is because that power (and in some measure retentiveness also) is perhaps more properly to be included in the general than in the local energies of the mind. The one property of Sensation that is both a strictly intellectual property and also special and local, is unquestionably Discrimination— the lively sense of difference wherever difference exists. He that can best discriminate the minute shades of colour has the highest intellectual endowment of optical sensi- bility, an endowment that is apt to be accompanied more or less with the susceptibility to pleasure from colour, but not either necessarily or in proportionate degree ; some- times, in fact, there is the appearance of an inverse pro- portion between those two. The Local Sensibilities of an intellectual kind, then, may be enumerated either on the Phrenological scheme of observing faculties, or, as I think better, according to the Psychological arrangement of the senses, including with these the muscular feelings. Commencing with the last, we are able to note special characteristics as attaching to the MOVEMENTS, giving birth to important aptitudes. Apart from mere energy of muscle, which is not to be entirely left out of the account, we should advert to the copious and various spontaneity of the movements ; a truly cerebral peculiarity, of which evidence is to be found in the early and pronounced flexibility of the moving organs, some or all. First, as to the locomotive group, and espe- cially the upper limbs, there may be a good natural compass of movement, eminently favourable for acquisitions of the mechanical kind. The vocal organs may have much or little of the same natural flexibility, arising from the pecu- liarly high development of the vocal centres in the brain. The play of feature is seen in some persons to be originally very various and flexible; in fact, the characteristic of te @ MOVEMENT AND SENSE. 303 flexibility is best understood by noticing the features of a oorn actor, and comparing them with instances of an unusually immovable countenance. Next to the primitive mobility, we should advert to the sensibility to degrees of exertion, or expended force, the foundation of all delicate graduation of power, and consequently of fine execution in any department of muscular action,—the constructiveness of the mechanician and the manual operator in every walk,—the management of the vocal organs in singing and speaking,—the precision of the actor's demeanour. The proof of such an endowment is in these effects, although they do not depend upon muscular sensibility alone, but in that in conjunction with the special sense of the results ; Touch in some manual operations, Sight in others and in stage display, Hearing in vocal efforts. If we are anxious on the point, we can easily separate the two contributing agencies of mechanical aptitude. That delicacy of central organ, which favours discrimination, may also be presumed to favour special retentiveness, this being naturally greater with the most lively impressions, and being of essential importance in the attainment of manual or other skill. If the brain is gifted with a good general retentiveness, these special acquirements, for which there 1s a good preparation in the existence of a high local sensibility, will be propor- tionally rapid and extensive. When we add the presence of an emotional interest, we seem to omit no leading element at the foundation of great powers of execution by means of bodily members. Of the SEnsEsS the least intellectual are Taste and Smell ; but as both these have a wide compass of discrimi- nation, serving valuable uses in life, they are not to be entirely relegated to the department of mere emotion. Without local organs in the scheme of Phrenology, they must still be conceived as having each a relation with a definite mass of the cerebrum, on whose quantity or quality 304 SPECIAL INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS. the energy of their discriminating function is dependent. Still, it is the three remaining senses that are to be con- sidered the pre-eminently intellectual members of the group. Touch is so mixed up with muscular perception, ‘that it is only by an effort of analysis that we get at the purely tactual sensations; namely, roughness and smooth- ness, and to a certain limited extent, hardness and softness, The delicacy of surface of fabrics of manufactured stuff may be appreciated by proper tactual. discrimination, although the muscular sense, being always present, can hardly be prevented from mixing itself up even in these matters. We have said enough of the many aptitudes that aggregate round the Sense of Hearing, and may now be excused from wordy repetitions. The Musical sense, the sense of cadence in Elocution, and the sense of Articu- late Form, are the three great varieties ; the last may enter into the highly intellectual aptitude for Language, certainly when that is acquired by the ear. It is equally super- fluous now to dwell upon the discriminating sensibilities of the Eye—Optical and Muscular,—since it has been already seen that many and various powers result from their being highly endowed ; not only the artist in colour, but the poet, naturalist, and observer of nature for all purposes, demand- ing the optical sense in good measure, and the other, that for Form, &c., entering into a wide range of the human capabilities. 3 Those Muscular Feelings and Sensations, clearly discri- minated and strongly retained, make up our world of ideas, the vast total that we term our Knowledge; and the cha- racter and extent of that knowledge will show what primi- tive sensibilities predominate in the mind. Here it is obvious the quality of general retentiveness must play a part; but in cases where one takes hold of some things firmly, as words, and of other things loosely, as forms and — colour, we must revert to a difference of local sensibility as PASSIVE RECIPIENCY AND REPRODUCTIVENESS. 305 the explanation, When there is a tendency to remember all classes of impressions with more than average tenacity, although all not quite equally, the general power is sig- nalized as more conspicuous than the local developments. In so far as knowledge is made up of those various impressions derived from our contact with the world, through our movements and senses combined—in other words, when it is the engraved picture, the persisting echo of what goes on around us—it is a simple product of impressiveness and retention, the result of what Phrenologists call faculties of observation. Such is the acquirement of our mother tongue and of all routine utterances that we are accustomed to; our recollection of the persons, and places, and objects around us, with the operations and movements that go on in our presence. Such also is school and book learning, imbibed and stored up in the order of its reception.s,But we cannot go far in this course of literal recipiency without coming upon a new phenomenon, namely, the power of selecting and re-combining these acquired trains of words, and images, and notions, and producing something quite different from our first experience passively received.. The mind takes an active fit, as 1t were, and works up its store of sounds and sights and touches into multifarious combi- nations, and delights in this power of fabrication and origination. This is a faculty wherein individuals differ very much, presenting us on the one hand with tame and literal retentiveness, vast stores taken in and left very much as they were received ; and on the other hand, less recep- tivity, but a greater activity of constructiveness, whereby the mind is prolific not so much in memories as in products. An enormous reader, a book glutton, whose reproductive faculty is little beyond the recollection of matter read, is in marked contrast with the original force put forth by Aristotle, Newton, and Hobbes, who also read, but so utterly transformed their received impressions, that we x 306 SPECIAL INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS. could scarcely, from their own works, trace the raw material as first communicated to their minds. Where shall we place this peculiar energy in our scheme of the faculties? Sometimes spoken of as Imagination, sometimes termed Genius, the Phrenologists have hardly been able to embrace it, except by occult assumptions at variance with the plainness and tangible nature of their scheme. One mode of depicting it partially is by constituting a region of the Reflecting faculties, which, two in number, embrace—one the comparisons of Poetry and Literary illustration, the other the combinations of Science. The shrewd devices of a skilful mechanic possessed of no science, exemplified on a great scale in the Chinese inventions, the fertility in practical resources—the glory of the English mind, and the greatness of the English nation—the genius of an Arkwright, a Watt, a Stephenson, a Wheatstone, a Rowland Hill ;—are not to be explained by any combination of Phrenological organs, nor by any amount of combined susceptibility and retentiveness, although both these qualities are neces- sary In a certain degree to the result. Ni all depart- ments, in Music, in Painting, in Oratory, as well as in Business and Science, a distinction has to be made- between consummate and extensive Acquisition literally reproduced, and Originality. A musical composer is endowed in a different way from a first-rate performer, although both must have a musical ear alike. In fact, the great desideratum in the theory of intellectual character, is to give an intelligible resolution of this innate power of recasting and moulding the raw material of thought, this determination to self-activity, so to speak, in place of remaining content with the received forms and order of the communicated impressions. In short, it is the problem of Original Genius that is the reproach of the schools of mental philosophy. | u CHAPTER XIV. TALENT. | a considering the sources of Originality of mind, let us advert again to what is meant by Talent, namely, the faculty of doing well what has been done before, and needs only study of examples and power of acquisition. Of the less complicated aptitudes, enough has been said. We have seen, for example, what is requisite to constitute a manual workman, or a musical performer: namely, the nice sense of graduated exer- tion in the active organs; sensitiveness to the effects to be produced ; interest in, or enjoyment of, the effect, which is the motive to employ the powers upon it; and general retentiveness to build up the successful tentatives into a fabric of acquired power. The instrumental musician, for example, combines good hands, a good ear, a delight in music, and a good memory, or retention of what he has once achieved. These four elements will suffice for a tolerably adequate explanation both of handicraft skill, and of artistic execution in all the departments of Fine Art. The most indispensable quality is the Sense for the effect to be produced—the ear in music, the sense of colour in painting, the eye for graceful forms in sculpture, and so on. Next in point of importance is the Executive organ, which nature and cultivation must combine to render delicate in the meaning above explained. A good natural Retentive- ness proportionably shortens the labour of acquisition, and therefore enables one to mount up to very high and elabo- rate combinations. Lastly, the special Enjoyment of the x 2 308 TALENT. work, which does not necessarily go along with the other requisites, prompts that steady application of the powers without which no great success can ever ensue. To be a good Architect, Sculptor, Painter, Actor, Orator, or Literateur, after foregone models, no endowments are called for but such as may be included in those four heads ; only, in some of the Arts, the Executive and the Sense are more complicated than in the instances now given. An Orator combines musical articulation and dramatic gesture —the Actor's province—with flow of words and well- chosen ideas, which demand an extensive series of intellec- tual acquisitions, both in language and in things. Not only must the Executive be made up of many contributing elements, but the Sense is a highly educated and artificial product; it takes great experience to feel the difference between a perfect and imperfect pleading at ‘the bar, or parliamentary harangue, not merely to know whether the speech has succeeded, but to know exactly in what points it has failed. A good master may initiate us more rapidly into this discrimination, but we may also be disposed to it by nature. I do not undertake here to analyse the con- stituents of that higher element of intellectual Taste whereby the method of composition in oratory, literary art, or scientific discourse is governed. We cannot in this instance refer at once to a primitive endowment sharpened by practice, like Tune or Colour ; we must have a certain basis of acquisition before even discrimination can begin, and there are some minds that seem as if they never could be taught to see the /wcidus ordo of a narrative or a piece of oratory, or the logic of an argumentation, while they are still capable of acquiring the raw materials of the compo- sition. No mere tyro can appreciate the masterly arrange- ment of a speech of Demosthenes; whatever name we give to this susceptibility— Discrimination, Sense, Taste, Judg- ment—which all at bottom mean pretty much the same, BUSINESS. 309 it isa thing of slow growth in all minds, and apparently impossible to some who may have read and heard, and perhaps got by heart, many good speeches. Yet until the sense has been attained,.a profusion of the best material stored in the memory, the most ample executive, will not make an orator. Perhaps some light will be shed upon this higher Taste by the remarks now to be offered on the subject of Practical or Business Talent, where the same artificial sensibility also enters. The Business man needs to have all the four essentials of the artistic mind, although these require to be somewhat modified in statement to suit his case. The Executive is now no longer mechanical skill, but the appli- cation of knowledge to certain ends, and the point to be explained is, by what natural aptitudes of the mind he becomes possessed of this knowledge—is it solely by In- tellect, to which we refer in a general way, the knowledge- getting faculty ; if so, what is the difference between it and other knowledge ? : Iapprehend that, in accounting for the Business mind, we must fall back upon the account already given of the prudential aptitude. We have seen that a prudent man carries with him a lively and abiding sense of the evils that are in his path, and of the pleasures that he is anxious to secure, aS an imprudent man is he that forgets both the one and the other. It is not spontaneous energy that suffices either for common prudence, or for the ends of a business profession, but directed energy; so it is not mis- cellaneous acquirement, or an intellect amassing stores of all kinds, but a certain specialized direction of the intel- lectual resources that goes to success in the same endeavour. The first thing to be known, and remembered, are the evils that have to be obviated, whatever these may be, whether the natural evils of bad work or the artificial evils of a master’s displeasure. To be readily and indelibly impressed 310 TALENT. with an evil once experienced is the very soul and genius of ‘a practical man. Having once made aslip, a wrong step, an omission, and having seen the bad consequences thereof, to remember the pain of that moment for ever after, is the best memory that we can bring into business. It is this memory that is the principle of selection of true business knowledge, namely, the knowledge suited for avoiding failures, which is another name for gaining ends. We shall meet a man who has once acutely suffered the pain of being unpunctual, and bears the recollection of it to his dying hour; that man will not be often unpunctual. Another may suffer the same pangs at the moment, but forget everything next day, his mind being so incoherent on the subject of pains, that they have no force after the reality is gone. Now busi- ness, and prudence, and conduct in life imply, before all other considerations, a well-remembered experience of the pains and evils that one is lable to; this is the inducement to do whatever can be done to prevent them, and to apply both knowledge and energy for this purpose. A moderate intellect for knowledge is not fatal to business; what is fatal is a moderate recollection of pains incurred, and about to be incurred. To be ‘tremblingly alive all o’er’ to the hundred possibilities of failure, of mischief, of disaster, will make a man turn what knowledge he has-to the best account, when another man with overflowing stores turns them to no account. It is at the points where we let slip from the intellect probable sources of danger, rocks ahead, that we are unbusinesslike. The hundred eyes of Argus are eyes for coming harm. A great practical mind sees the difficulties, because it remembers bitter experience forgotten by others, who may have also passed through it. Of course, it is to be supposed that we should feel in the first instance: people differ very much in their original senisbilities, what gives great offence to one giving none to another ; and no man will work to ward off what is no ENDS AND MEANS IN BUSINESS. S11 evil to him when it comes. But the vital thing is to retain a good impress for after times of whatever afflicts us in its actual presence ; so that, when the occasion is about to be repeated, there may at least be present the motive of avoidance, with which comparatively small ability may go some way, and without which no amount of ability will be of any service to its possessor. There are, then, two very different elements in the business intellect: the intellect for good and evil, on the one hand, and on the other the proper knowledge-intellect, which refers to the means and resources for securing the ends. This last must not be wanting, although we can better afford to have it feeble than to have the other feeble. A great seaman like Nelson must have, in the first instance, that sense of possible evil at every side, that circumspectness which casualties do not surprise. In his death-agonies he could notice the rope that had to be restored, and give the orders to anchor, so well justified by the consequences of neglect. To combine this Argus sus- ceptibility to possible mischief with a dashing courage, so often fed at the expense of the other, was the distinguish- ing greatness of Nelson, no less than of Wellington. This was the high practical sense, the knowledge of good and evil. It behoved these men, also, to possess a certain amount of the intellect for common knowledge, for language, and for outward things, and for all pertinent book-instruc- tion. To be a good seaman, one should not merely mark and remember every hazard that may befal the seafaring life, in commerce or in war, so as to be always ready to anticipate such when the circumstances come round; one should also have a good verbal memory, to keep a hold of all the names belonging to the occupation, to recollect all the orders, directions, and instructions that are conveyed in language, which is obviously an element of cleverness in this as in most other professions. One should likewise 812 TALENT. have a good eye and memory for objects, or things seen, so as rapidly to discriminate, and quickly to store up, all the appearances connected with the working of a ship or of a fleet. The element of observation, including the eye for colour, form, size, distance, as marking the character of outward objects, should be strong in the young Nelson, if he would possess resources to correspond with his keen sense of evils. What in its highest development would make a great Naturalist is useful in moderate proportions to a seaman, a soldier, an engineer, and most other prac- tical professions. We can hardly expect these men to carry pure observation to the utmost length, because that could only be at the expense of the special observation of the ends of their craft; but they will amply reap the frutt of being fair scholars at school, and tolerably sharp in taking notice of what passes around them. The boy that can remember his grammar-rules will also remember the language that conveys information, instructions, and orders relative to his conduct on shipboard ; although it would be a poor prognostic of his rise to greatness if languages were his only acquirement.\/Even high science may leave a man very stupid for practice ; the non-appreciation of the ends, principal and subordinate, that are the essence of practical life, renders the best knowledge worthless. It is this lack of the susceptibility to ends, to the evils to be avoided, and the good to be compassed, that we denounce as the want of common sense, which may concur with intellectual brilliancy. The knowledge of things is but an adjunct to the knowledge of ends. The physician aware, in the first instance, of all the dangers his patient is liable to, should then from his other knowledge select the best means of obviating those; but though he had the whole materia medica by heart, he would not be nearer his mark if he knew nothing of disease; and this is essentially the Fall-gotten knowledge of good and evil impressed on him ~ APTITUDE FOR MEDICINE. 3Ts through a susceptibility of his mind, altogether distinct from the acquisition of Natural History and Chemistry.. To remember well the pains and the moments of relief of all the sufferers that he has witnessed is the first requisite of a physician ; to couple these with their attendant circum- stances, and store them up too, is a farther extension of the practical intelligence. On this foundation he ought to build a store of Nature-knowledge (Materia Medica, Chemistry, Physiology, &c.) ; of Book-knowledge (the sum- mary of other men’s experience) ; and of Logical acumen (to ascertain cause and effect in the multitude of concurring appearances in disease). As a man prudent for himself should remember adequately all his own pains, so a man skilfully prudent for the sick, should remember all their pains and weaknesses in the first instance; his head should be more full of misery than the box of Pandora, and his only solace should be the Hope at the bottom.+ If we would test a young man’s aptitude for the profession of physic, we might question him upon all the ailments that he has undergone, and the cases he has witnessed by chance in his family circle. (A spontaneous recollection of the minutize of those cases, and of the remedies and treatment, would prove an aptitude for the subject-matter of medicine. It is patent to any one’s notice that the stupidity to ends is quite as prevailing a form of intellectual imbecility, as the want of common observation and the inaptitude for book- knowledge. It is a singular, but a genuine, distinction among men, that one should keep a tenacious hold of emo- tional elements, of the pleasures and pains that he has passed through, and that he has witnessed others pass through ; and that another, letting all that slip, should re- member music, wortls, landscapes, birds, plants, and all the detail of the face of Nature, which the first is perhaps oblivious to. It may now be seen how the higher Taste, or Judgment, 314 TALENT, in Art, may be evolved, and from what original source. An artist’s business is to cater for Pleasure as his chief end; a business man may be said to be mostly engaged in avoid- ing pains. The physician, the lawyer, and the magistrate would have no function but for miseries that we are con- stantly incurring. Now the artist, while assembling as many sweets as he can command, soon finds that these have their side of bitter; if badly assorted, or too much pro- longed, they lead to a class of pains of a new description, best known to the devoted pleasure-seekers, His next business, then, is to be well aware of those pains, just as a seaman must know effectively all the risks of his trade. This is artistic Taste in the higher acceptation, wherein great artists may be often deficient. They flow out in luxuriant abundance, not exercising a good selection of sweets in the first instance, and not avoiding the point of excess or satiety in the next. Here, too, the genius and the discipline of pain are put in requisition. The taste of a Gray or a Tennyson is born of this sensitiveness-to the thorns that come with poetic roses; the elaborate method of Demosthenes was arrived at by a series of experiments of effects missed, and was not a primitive sense peculiar to his own genius. Pain is the tutor of the practical man, simply because his practice is all for the avoiding of it. A great diplomatist is in chief part made up of remembered failures in dealing with men. This is the first half of his ‘experience,’ his ‘ good sense,’ his ‘ tact ; the second half is the knowledge of means to steer clear of the same rocks in future. So much for practice: let us next turn to the talent for Science. In discussing the Phrenological organ of Cau- sality, the mode of resolving the scientific intelligence came under discussion ; it remains here to illustrate the matter more fully. One would naturally suppose that in science we have the purest product of Intellect strictly under- SCIENCE. 815 stood ; and consequently, that we should trace it toa pecu- liar combination of the three great. Intellectual powers, Discrimination, Retentiveness, and Similarity. We ought to be able to assign some Local susceptibility,—something in the eye or other sense,—where the material to be worked upon is imbibed, and which, with the addition of the General powers, would account for the whole effect. By such a combination, with the requisite emotional sensibilities, we can account for Mechanical skill, Artistic execution, and even the higher Practical talent (saving where that takes in Science) ; and we are now to try the same method with this new case. The Phrenologists gave themselves a wider basis of ex-- planation than what is here assumed. In such an organ as Number they had something besides a sensibility of one of the Senses—as colour or form,—they had a special appli- cation of a sensibility, namely, that of Form, to the case of numerical calculations. JI do not admit any such assumption as a primary or ultimate fact of the mind: if I did, I feel I should be obliged to have many more; for, as some great numerical calculators have failed in Geometry, it would be equally requisite to have a separate faculty for the sense of Form applied to this also. As at present advised, I concede no ultimate elements of Intel- lect, except the discriminative sensibility of the Movements and the Senses, and the general powers so often mentioned, namely (in addition to Discrimination), Retentiveness and Similarity. The Senses that furnish the greatest amount of matter to the intellect being sight and hearing, we must seek chiefly in these for the primitive material, the original impressions to be worked upon; and for the present pur- pose, it is manifest that the visual impressions are by far the most important. In the more abstract sciences, as Mathematics, the sensible elements are almost exclusively visible forms, which, being also expressible in audible | 316 TALENT. speech, derive a certain additional hold on the mind through the sense of hearing. It would appear then, that, whatever else is implied, a mathematician should have an eye for forms, and should discriminate and remember those with facility. But will the discrimination and memory for visible symbolical forms, with a power of recalling them through Similarity, make a Mathematical mind ? I answer, no; and for this reason, that the very same aptitudes are equally involved in a faculty totally different, I mean the power of languages, when learnt not through the ear, but by the eye. M. Stanislas Julien, the great Chinese scholar, and Mr. George Bidder, first known as the ‘Calculating Boy,’ are equally dependent on their hold of arbitrary visible forms: they must be alike discriminative and- retentive of many such ; one apparent difference being ‘that the one has to remember many thousands of distinct forms, and couple them with the corresponding forms in the mother tongue, and the other remembers many different combinations of few primitive forms. But even this distinc- tion does not hit the case, for it equally expresses the dis- tinction between the Chinese language and an alphabetical language like English or French, and does not amount to the far more radical difference between lingual and mathe- matical acquirement. . In the following chapter, devoted especially to the subject of Genius, the intellectual force of like recalling like, will be shown to be especially required for the scientific faculty: in every department. It will be seen, that while large Con- tiguity is necessary for the mastering of numerous uncon- nected details, such as the mere vocables of a language, or the objects of Natural History, it is of the nature of Science to comprehend many resembling particulars in the sweep of one principle, or formula, and for this purpose the power of easily discerning similarities is of great consequence. We cannot finish the discussion of the intellectual founda- SCIENTIFIC TASTE. 317 tions of Arithmetical talent till that power is fully before us. But there are certain emotional characteristics that enter into the question, as between M. Julien and Mr. Bidder, and it may be well here to advert to these. I have already shown the importance due to the absence of certain susceptibilities, in order to constitute a scientific mind, being chiefly those that develope themselves into Fine Art, as, for instance, Colour, and the attributes of Form that belong to Art. There must be a penury in these respects, in order to permit the. forces of the intellect to be concentrated on the more arbitrary characteristics that merely serve to distinguish one form from another.* And farther, there being a deep estrangement between the artistic and scientific aspects of the same natural phe- nomenon, the application of the mind to scientific requires the artistic to be kept in abeyance; so that, in fact, 1t had better not exist. With regard to the positive influence of a special emotion in giving a direction to the Intellectual powers, I may quote from Mr. Bidder’s own account of the origin of his Arith- metical faculty. Remarking on the point of this being a peculiar power in which he stood singular, he says :—‘I have endeavoured to examine my own mind, to compare it with that of others, and to discover if such be the case ; but I can detect no particular turn of mind beyond a pre- dilection for figures, which many possess almost in an equal degree with myself.’ He then relates how, under the influence of such a predilection, he gave himself up to the study of numbers, learning first the ordinary multipli- cation-table by making lines and squares of peas, marbles, * An exception to this is the head for Perspective, which connects itself with the head for Geometry. Leonardo da Vinci was an original and skilful mathematician. Still I have no doubt that anything like devotion to the scientific point of view is adverse to the free outgoings of the Artistic mind. 318 TALENT, and shot; and then enlarging upon this until at last his own multiplication-table, actually in his memory, rose to a million (Smiles’s Self-Help, chap. ii.). Now it 1s apparent that a tenacious recollection of forms and figures as such, principally as visible in the ten ciphers and their com- binations, must have been at the basis of this faculty,—the intellectual condition or starting-point, in whose absence the most intense predilection would have produced merely ordinary results. And if so, it seems not improbable, that if Mr. Bidder had been so constituted in his emotional sensibility as to take an equally strong enterest in the Chinese characters, devoting his days to copying them, combining them with their English meanings, and storing them in his memory as he did his millionaire multipli- cation-table, the fifty or eighty thousand words of that language might not have been too much for him, and that he might then have been the rival of M. Julien. Thus a common intellectual aptitude in the shape of discriminative sensibility for arbitrary skeleton forms (the local power), and great retentiveness (the general power), would be at the bottom of these very diverse gifts ; and the determination in one way would not lie in any new peculiarity of pure intellect, but in the emotional susceptibility that gave the strong bent to occupy the mind in that direction. The only consideration that stands in the way of this inference, is the probable need of a good power of similarity in the Arithmetician, while undoubtedly in a Chinese scholar this may be of the lowest order, there being nothing to class or identify, and the great demand being for a retentiveness that is inexhaustible by any amount of unmeaning detail. If feeling thus goes a good way to. explain the distinctive origin of the scientific aptitude, we may naturally wish to probe the depths of those peculiar emotions, or that strong interest, or taste, or ‘predilection,’ that the abstractions COMPREHENSIVENESS OF SCIENCE. 319 and symbolical forms and theorems of science can stir up, and which being naturally powerful in any man, gives the bent to the employment of whatever intellectual force he may possess. To a mind of average make, there is much that is dis- tasteful, not to say repulsive, in the dry, hard, cold formulas of Algebra or Chemistry. The meaning and power of them are not at first comprehended by a beginner; but after going a little way, these gradually disclose themselves. Even in mere numbers, a charm is soon felt by the variety of modes that the same sum can be resolved—the plurality of factors in the same product. To see how many ways a certain number, as 48, can be made up (6 x 8, 4 x 12, 3 x 16, &&.) is an interesting occupation, the point. of interest being the discovery of unexpected similarities, which enters widely into the charms of science. The symmetries, harmonies, and proportions that can be struck out in the manipulation of numbers, and that appear more and more in the higher mathematics, affect some minds deeply, and the more so that such minds are wanting in the sensibilities that would draw them to poetry and art. But a far more impressive effect is produced when it is seen how comprehensive these dry formulas are ; how much they give in little. Hundreds and thousands of facts that would have to be learnt in wearisome detail are imparted at a stroke, if we will only consent to master scientific language. After extracting roots in detail, we are delighted to see how the operation can be stated once for all in the binomial theorem, while that can be swallowed up in theorems still more compre- hensive. If we can only but enter into this arduous career, the power that we obtain of stating and explaining the order of the world keeps up our interest, by appealing to a fundamental satisfaction of the human mind, the accomplishing of large effects by little means. Even in the very threshold and elements of science, glimpses of this 320 TALENT. powerful agency disclose themselves to detain the youthful mind. If the purely intellectual force is present in sufficient quantity—the memory for arbitrary forms and for their meanings and associations,—so as to enable one without much difficulty to learn the marks and symbols, the interest now adverted to, on becoming distinctly apparent, will secure a devotion of the mind that will complete the scientific aptitude. It would be a mistake to suppose that the scientific predilections could flourish in a lean intel- lectual soil ; the local susceptibilities and the general force of retention must be there in goodly proportions, Even an arithmetician must have in him the elements of a tolerably clever person; and no one can be a high mathematician, or a great physiologist, without very considerable intel- lectual force, such as, if determined by a different order of predilections or tastes, would have conferred a marked superiority over the ordinary run of minds, .The handling of abstractions, which are in themselves nothing, but yet can represent a vast range of actual phenomena, demands a full share of the elements of the intellect proper; for an abstract idea results usually from the scrutiny of many examples, which must have been observed and remem- bered, in order to that effort of comparison that brings to light their common property ; the abstract idea of a metal being what is common to all the metals, these should be known in detail in order to furnish the general description. Now, if every abstraction that a scientific man deals with has to be adjusted by an appropriate number of facts, the -mere memory for such facts must be powerful and abun- dantly stored, a thing that cannot be in a mind intel- lectually feeble; although it is equally true that great natural force may not flow in this precise channel. It is, therefore, this capacity to comprehend and explain the vast and complex order of Nature, that must be looked upon as the soul of the scientific predilection. Even fanciful ex- PRACTICAL INTEREST OF SCIENCE. S2le planations could give an interest to scientific pursuit in the minds of Plato and Aristotle. When once seized with the desire of unravelling and accounting for the phenomena of the world, the employment of the intelligence for that end follows as @ matter of course, unless discouraged by in- sufficiency of power. The different sciences have their several points of attraction, according to the varying susceptibilities and caprices of the individual mind. But there remains at the threshold of all the great fundamental Sciences—Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Physiology, &e., as distinguished from Botany and Zoology—the pro- hibition set up by Plato against the incapacity for ma- thematics ; if a pupil breaks down in Arithmetic, he must be wanting fundamentally in power, or in predilection, for science generally. The chief exception to this would be in Natural History, where the actual objects of nature, rather than abstractions, are the matter of study. The applications of science to Practice, so abundant in these later times, are a motive to pursue it, although second to the other, which may be called the more intrinsic interest, in whose absence scientific knowledge could never have been got forward to the stage of practical utility. Yet this last stage is one of great importance even in the speculative point of view, for it brings into play more decisively the process of verifying theories by actual trial. The working up of Astronomy to the pitch of accuracy required in navigation, could not have taken place while any wild and hypothetical speculations, such as the Car- tesian vortices, or the Aristotelian notion of perfect figures, adhered to the subject. The sentiment of the love of Truth, reposing, in the first instance, on the absence of in- consistency, is finally completed by the satisfaction accruing from what answers the ends of life, and by the repugnance to whatever, pretending to do so, signally fails. +4 CHAPTER XV. . GENIUS. N the foregoing chapter, I have treated of intellectual ability of a high order, without supposing that special mode or degree that goes by the name of Genius. It becomes us now to ascertain some precise signification, as properly attaching to this term of lofty eulogium, and then to see what are the foundations of it in our mental con- stitution. Like so many other names of mental qualities, this word has a considerable diversity of meanings. In the first place, it may imply nothing more than the special taste, leaning, or department of an intellectual worker; as when we say such an Artist’s genius lay towards the sublime, or the pic- turesque, or the humorous; or a scientific man’s genius was more in experiment than in speculation ; or, if a practical man, he had the genius for organization, or for influencing other men, or the like. In this application of the word there is supposed a certain degree of intellectual aptitude, but it is not the power so much as the department, or kind of it, that is taken into view. Again, the name sometimes refers more exclusively to Fine Art, or to the works of Imagination properly so called, as opposed to scientific and practical creations. We are more accustomed perhaps to hear great poets termed men of genius, than great philosophers, generals, or states- men. The effects that an Artist can produce are so im- mediate, so striking, so universally felt, so essentially of the nature of pleasure imparted, that they are more easily and GENIUS MEANS ORIGINALITY. 328 thoroughly appreciated than the labours of those that merely contribute, perhaps in a manner not very apparent, to ward off evils. Hence the general public are more ready with their epithets of admiration to the poet, painter, or sculptor, than to the Geometer, the Chemist, or the Political Economist. The third meaning that I would specially advert to is, I think, the most appropriate of any, as it refers to a more fundamental and important agreement among the things denominated by the name, than the two former, which, in comparison, are but casual significations. I refer to the power of Originality, Invention, Discovery, Creation, as opposed to the mere mastery (no matter how skilful and effective) of what has been already known. I have used the name Talent to signify the aptitude for following any vocation, according to the existing and established rules, and for doing that well. It takes no small intellectual force to be a successful lawyer, politician, orator, teacher, philologist, man of science, &c., but the force that gives a mastery over beaten tracks must always be put in contrast, more or less, with the power of origination. There is, in fact, a difference of disposition among men in this respect, apart from capability: it is the tendency of some minds to hold -to the established routine, even although possessing intelligence enough to be original ; and it is the tendency of others to affect originality, with altogether inadequate means. The existence of this disposition will count for something in the result; and I shall therefore make a few remarks upon that in the first place, which will also afford an op- portunity of bringing to light an important and prevailing difference in men’s characters. A properly intellectual mind takes in and lays up know- ledge from any quarter. It matters not whether the source be its own observation and reflection, or the communicated observations and reflections of other minds, This is the Y 2 324 GENIUS. true spirit of curiosity and inquiry. There is, however, a pretty numerous class, who have the greatest reluctance to imbibe knowledge as simply imparted by teachers, books, or informed persons; their interest is not roused unless they can conquer it for themselves. The facts that they gather, the conclusions, opinions, and generalizations that they form, are what clings to them ; anything presented in the guise of communicated information hardly finds admis- sion into their store. The grounds of the character are not hard to make out ; it is a preponderance of active energy over intellect proper. Mere knowledge, as such, is not acceptable without the superadded charms of active exer- cise and self-gratulation. Such minds have a strong bent towards originality ; if they can discover nothing actually new, they are still discoverers of the old. But it is hardly possible to indulge this tendency without occasionally discovering the new, although it is not to such minds that the highest revelations of advanced truths are made. Their intellectual basis is too narrow to support a structure of first-rate dimensions. They read and listen not to derive information, but for the confirmation of views indepen- dently arrived at. In controversy they have the defect of being unable, morally or intellectually, to comprehend an opponent’s point of view, and hence a question is not much furthered by a debate with them. It is often laid down as a maxim in the art of teaching, that a pupil should be put in the way of arriving at a truth by the employment of his own powers, instead of receiving it passively from the master; but the necessity for such a plan only proves the low intellectual standard of human beings generally. An intellect of the right sort can appropriate instruction, with- out the stimulus of this compliment to its own powers. So much for the love of originality for its own sake. There are various other motives and accidents that deter- mine men to leave the beaten track, in favour of something INTELLECTUAL PECULIARITY OF GENIUS. 325 that is both new and superior to the old, which alone deserves the praise of genius. Some of those will appear as we proceed; but in these preliminary observations, I must single out one power of the intellect that stands _ conspicuous in all very high original genius, in the sense we “are now considering. It will be remembered that three great facts, or properties, are implied in our intellectual nature, viz., Discrimination, Retentiveness, and Similarity. The first, Discrimination, is essentially local: no one has a power of discrimination in the general or the abstract ; it is In some one or more departments of Sensation, &c., that we are remarkable in this respect. The two other powers are, in all probability, general. Retentiveness is no doubt greatest where local sensibility, as shown by discrimination, is greatest ; but we have reason to believe that this may be a general characteristic of the mind, and when it is so, extent of acquisition is the consequence. In fact, it is the occasional existence of the tendency to large and various acquirements, that leads us to assume Retentiveness as a quality unequally manifested in different minds, and there- fore a proper basis of the classification of character. In its utmost developments, this power exactly corresponds to what we have named Talent, and put into contrast with Genius, being the power of taking on at all hands whatever is brought before us. Whether it be to learn handicraft manipulation, to store up every kind of knowledge, to master routine avocations, or even to receive the mould of new habits and dispositions, there is implied a plastic property, a rapidity in taking the set of communicated impressions, which is what is meant by the term in ques- tion. On some one remarking in presence of Wellington that habit was equal to nature, he replied, ‘habit is ten times nature; a strong expression, not applicable to all constitutions, but true of some, perhaps of the Duke him. self, if we are to judge from his making the remark. Now 326 GENIUS. if genius have any peculiarity of meaning, if it be not identified with cleverness or ability of every sort, we must oppose it to acquirement and routine. And it will be found that it is in the third power of the intellect, and not in Discrimination or Retentiveness, that a tendency exists to break through the formulas of use and wont, and bring toge- ther for the first time things that lay far remote before. The principle named Similarity has long been known as a law of the human mind; but it is only of late that any one has adverted to it as constituting, by its variations of degree, a trait of character. It was seen by Aristotle that, in reviving ideas or experiences formerly possessed by us, one link, or medium of restoration, is a likeness of those past states to some one now actually present ; as when a copy recals an original, or a child reminds us of the parent that it resembles. And when closely investigated, it appears that the important instances of the operation of similarity, in resuscitating former experiences, are those where the likeness is accompanied with unlikeness, which unlikeness is a bar to the stroke of recovery. It is then seen, that some minds are distinguished by their power of breaking through this barrier, so as to make out an identity undiscoverable by other minds. The reach of the identifying stroke, which recovers from the past the whole range of objects having any resemblance to what is before the view, or in the mind, at the time, is a peculiarity of the intellect radically distinct from both Discrimination and Retention. When this is feeble, the principal power of recovery is what is called ‘Contiguity,’ or proximity in place and time, a link forged purely by the plastic or retentive energy of the mind. We then remember things simply in the order that they have been presented before, the order of routine, or of habitual presentation. We remember a river by being reminded of towns on its banks, of its source, or its mouth, or some historical associations; this is memory by con- Ton THE POWER OF IDENTIFICATION. $27 tiguity, or plastic adhesiveness. When the river rises to view on thinking of other rivers, the medium is similarity, So when it rises before us as a figure of speech to illustrate a series of events, or the course of history, the recovery turns upon likeness, which in this instance is disguised by accompanying unlikeness, and the force of identification and recovery is more vigorous, and of a kind more rarely exhi- bited. There is a certain average degree of this power of restoration through likeness clogged by diversity ; while scattered individuals possess it in far higher measure, and always with striking results. In them the flow of words, ideas, or actions is something different from the common- places, whether the intrinsic merit of what is produced be great or little. It is certain that without a considerable reach of this identifying faculty, we cannot rise to originality of conception as the habitual characteristic of the mind; there is no other principle of the intellect as yet enunciated that would bear this species of fruit. Having in another place (Senses and the Intellect, book ii. chap. 1.) illustrated, with the greatest fulness of detail, the workings of this principle of like recalling like, through the disguises of diversity, I will not undertake to repeat the exposition here. But as I consider it quite im- possible to afford any explanation of intellectual originality, except on the supposition of an unusual energy on this point, I am obliged to give an intelligible account of the principle, so far as space will admit. This I count the leading fact of genius, while there are other. subsidiary peculiarities, not without their value, and in some of the departments perhaps taking precedence of it. But the remaining illustrations of the subject will fall better under the three divisions of intellectual ability, already followed in discussing talent—Art, Practice, Science. It isin the Literary Fine Arts that the purely intellec- tual elements are conspicuous, If we begin at the other 328 GENIUS. end of the scale, and take, for example, Music, it may be doubted if even originality reposes principally upon the highest function of the intellect. I should rather be dis- posed to assume, as the first condition of an original com- poser, the element of superior sensibility, of a discrimina- tion and delicacy of sense above what is common among musicians, A new sense, so to speak, will of itself deter- mine new creations in accordance therewith ; the materials for these being sought out everywhere, from existing com- positions, from random attempts, and chance suggestions. An original sensibility brought to bear on the works of former composers, will, by rejecting, re-arranging, and adjusting, produce entirely new effects, without supposing that there is any special force in the mind for concoct- ing fresh melodies. As the taste is the ruling. element in Art, any remarkable advance in that, even a deviation from the prevailing susceptibility, will cause a demand for an altered style to gratify it. Given the original acuteness or idiosyncrasy of sense, an ordinary musical education will supply the power ; aided, no doubt, by a good retentive faculty generally, but not very obviously bringing into play the principle of like recalling like through remote- ness, although neither is that principle excluded. Such is the view that seems to be most probable in accounting for the musical genius of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, or Men- delssohn. In Painting, nearly the same importance must be at- tached to originality in the sensibility to effects. An original colorist has got from nature a superior natural feeling for colour ; this fact alone would be the cause of novelty of execution. But as Painting involves a more in- tellectual order of conceptions than music, a greater amount of intelligence than painters usually possess, joined to the average sense of effects, would enable one to take a start in advance. The introduction of expressive and sug- THE FINE ARTS. 829 gestive particulars into a picture proceeds from intellectual resources, or from education, observation, and the two forces of Retentiveness and Similarity combined. We can hardly conceive of Michael Angelo otherwise than as raised above other painters, by the greater reach of his intellectual forces, properly so called ; while Raphael, and many others whom I will not undertake to specify, owed their genius to superior natural sensibility to the effects of the painter’s Art. One must never omit to allow for the distinction that uncommon energy may eventually confer upon the man of merely common endowments—a remark that applies to every form of human greatness. I pass over Architecture and Sculpture, which might be treated in an almost parallel way. In both, the intellect is of importance as supplying materials to be subjected to the decision of the artistic sense. But it will be of some use, in illustrating artistic originality generally, if we study for a moment the genius of the actor on the stage. As in all the others, we must suppose an acute natural sensibility, and if this is passing great, the results already indicated will follow. But here the stress of the originality may be laid upon a quite different circumstance, namely, the idiosyn- crasy of the actor’s framework, a thing not only out of the sphere of intellect, but out of the sphere of any mental quality whatsoever. A form of person more than ordinarily beautiful, majestic, or even comical; spontaneous movements remarkable for emphasis, or for some other effect which they produce without intention ; vocal power—these may all be something distinct from, and superior to, what is commonly met with. Unconscious gifts of person may thus do far more than mental endowment, while they are an enviable basis to work upon when the other elements concur. Now, what is so obvious in the genius for the stage, and in the fascination of natural beauty off the stage, may be also a cause of originality in other Fine Arts, A musician may 330 GENIUS. have some spontaneity of vocal effusion that to the ear has both novelty and charm ; this would be to him the hint of a new melody, a new idea as it were,in much the same manner that a painter finds ideas among casual forms of - nature. Soa cadence in verse may be suggested by some quite unconsidered outburst of utterance, the natural form that impassioned speech takes in anindividual mind. The sense being present to take advantage of these accidents, we have, as the fruit, a new pleasure secured to man- kind. To come to Poetry. Here everything is implied that has just been stated with reference to the other Arts. Certain strong sensibilities to some, or all, of the effects denominated poetical, must be at the foundation, to de- termine not only the poetic execution, but also the pre- vious storing of the mind with apt materials. Thus, to take the case of Lyric poetry or song, where a certain bold, melodious, and impressive metre is the first charac- teristic. No man can compose songs without having, in the first instance, a strong susceptibility to the metrical cadence ; not merely a pleasure in it, but a pleasure bound up with delicate discrimination, and accompanied with strong retention in the memory. It is this firm recollec- tion that enables one to compose in it, by the proper choice and adaptation of language and thought. The mate- rials we derive from our stock of words, no matter how ac- quired ; although the strains of language that have already - a metrical form, being found in previous compositions, will easier take the form again. As a matter of course, the memory stored with poetical compositions is best fitted to draw upon in new attempts. But let a man have an intense ear for metrical form, shown inastrong abiding presence of the examples of it, and he will, out of his recollection of prose, cast words in the metrical mould. Should he have a surpassing sensibility on this head, he has a chance to THE POET. 3831 devise new and superior cadences, being all the better able to do so if he is also largely versed in language. The illustration is the same for any other poetical sensi- bility. A poet may be original from his greater depth of feeling for some particular of poetic effect, or by greater in- tellectual resources with merely ordinary feeling. The intellectual resources depend on the general forces of the mind, coupled with the opportunities of acquirement. Language is indispensable in the first instance; a copious memory for words a poet should have in common with a scholar. Next is the pictorial eye, the endowment shared with the painter. Strong discriminative reception of colour and form, the basis of the vivid hold of nature in the con- crete, gives variety of images and conceptions suited to enter into every kind of poetry, being in some kinds the principal substance, and in all kinds the adjunct. But this intense observation of the outer world should be governed by poetic feelings, so as to make the proper selection, other- wise the acquirements will be so miscellaneous, as to con- tain but little of what is really applicable. The beautiful, the picturesque, the sublime, the pathetic, the humorous, should be preferred ; and when those susceptibilities are keen, the preference follows, and the merely useful or scientific is_ neglected. The same selective appropriation applies to reading and study. In this way the poetic mind is fur- nished with stores of images and thoughts adapted for its purposes, and recalled in the act of composition. The human feelings are also an element of poetic composition, for which one’s own experience is the primary source ; but the observation of other men is still better, for this reason, that it is the embodiment of feeling that the poet has to do with, and in himself he has it as it were disembodied and therefore useless, until it first pass into that expression which it already has when viewed in a fellow-being. So that even the poetic eye for human feelings should be still 352 GENIUS. an eye for the outward, rather than the introspective con- sciousness, The analysis of any great poet would show these elements in detail. The critical examination of poetry usually dis- criminates between the sensibilities and the resources ; while under either head we may note wide varieties in individuals. But I have laid it down as a maxim, that while the quality of Retentiveness must be high, as well as directed to the proper objects, in order to furnish a poetic mind, this alone would not produce great original works, without an unusual endowment of Similarity. An induc- tion of the greatest literary names of all ages would esta- blish this assertion beyond the possibility of dispute. Shakspeare alone would suffice for the proof.. It is this power of bringing together things that lay remote before, but possessed a likeness sufficient for their identification by him, that strikes us more frequently perhaps than any other peculiarity of his genius. Other intellectual forces he had : a strong retentive glance of whatever he encountered— most retentive when his peculiar feelings were acted upon (and he had his own peculiar feelings, which may be dis- cerned in his style)*—implying both local endowments and the retentive brain in general; but these would have done little but for his having, in an unparalleled degree, the power of bringing up far-fetched resemblances. What are the metaphors, similes, comparisons, allegories, illustrations of every poet, but strokes of the faculty of like recalling like ; and who comes up to Shakspeare in the profusion, the originality, the felicity shown in this particular depart- ment? These are the obvious instances of the power ; but * See the very interesting essay by Professor Masson, on Shak- speare’s personality (Essays on the English Poets, p. 13), where irrefragable evidence is adduced in favour of certain characteristic veins of feeling inherent in him as aman, and apart from his dramatic faculty of assuming other men’s sentiments and views. THE GENIUS OF PRACTICE. $383 there are many thoughts and conceptions which do not show it on the surface, but when analysed, are seen still to depend on the same identifying stretches. And having made ourselves familiar with the fact in the greatest example, let us turn to almost any other poet or literary genius, and we encounter the same thing in every page ; Milton is the second in English Literature ; Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, Pope, will occur at once. In prose, too, a writer may be tasteful and copious; but if he is original and felicitous, it is his power of comparison that makes him so; witness, Bacon at the head, Jeremy Taylor, Addison, Burke, Macaulay, and indeed, the whole host of celebrities in literature properly so called. The region where this power is manifested is necessarily the region of a man’s peculiar acquisitions ; Shakspeare never made a simile from Euclid, or from Thomas Aquinas, notwith- standing that his range seemed to know no bounds. - The Genius of Practice is essentially comprised in what has been said under Practical Talent. We have merely to add to the power of Circumspection, or the precautionary foresight, an inventive faculty, the account of which is common for practice and for science. Properly speaking, the genius for practice should be a more than ordinary reach of circumspection, judgment, and active energy in applying known resources to obviate known evils. We find very generally, that an original and inventive mind spends itself in multiplying contrivances, which other minds bring to bear on the conduct of affairs. No men ever did more for political improvements than Adam Smith and Bentham ; but neither belonged to the class of practical men in the proper sense of the word, namely, as concerned in, and responsible for, the actual administration of the government. It is better to include those original thinkers among men of science, and give the title of men of practice $34: * GENIUS. to Burke or Pitt, Canning and Peel, Wellington and Nelson, and to our great lawyers, merchants, engineers, surgeons, public teachers, and so on. An original: states- man finds enough to do if he take up suggestions from all quarters, and adapt them to meet existing evils, or to extend the sphere of beneficial legislation. To him belongs the clear view of the disease to be remedied, and of the effects that this or the other application would produce ; he should be able to judge, from his extensive acquaintance with cause and effect, in political matters, whether any new evils would result from what is proposed. It is quite enough for one mind to be conversant with all the peculiari- ties of the patient to be treated, the discovery of the materia medica may be left to a different class of inquirers. Although; therefore, history has presented us with in- ventive minds in the actual management of affairs, such as we may suppose Solon and Pericles to have been, if they were really the inventors as well as the introducers of their own state devices, and such as we know Turgot to have been ; and although among our own contemporaries, there are men distinguished both for original suggestions and considerable judgment in applying them, I believe a close inspection of characters would show that in every such case the decided leaning is to one side; and if so, there can be little hesitation as to the side that should receive the designation of talent, or genius, for practice. An entirely original grasp of evils to be met, a more tenacious hold of them in the precautionary memory, and a consequent greater alertness in dealing with them, and in knowing what will answer the purpose,—would be my definition of practical greatness. Intellectual resources of a good ordinary compass, drawn upon under a pressure of this description, would issue in solid improvements, or in successful administration in trying times. A Wellington, who added nothing to the machinery or the tactics of war, was still a military genius. His precautionary intellect ranged so far beyond the limits CROMWELL. 335 of a commonplace commander, that he was a genius in practice, although not in science. But perhaps no man has illustrated practical greatness so fully as Cromwell, whose position gave scope in every way for this quality. He was most emphatically a man of practice. His mind was con- stituted on as large a scale as any man that we can name, and no part of it went to Fine Art on the one hand, and a very little (although that little had its worth) to specula- tion or abstract science on the other. So much mind, so decisively concentrated upon actual business concerns, we are not to look for many times in a thousand years. That part of the intelligence occupied with the recollection of good and evil, in the infinity of their possible manifesta- tions, attained in him to the maximum possible to human nature. We see it from the first moment of his public career, when he entered on military service in the Eastern Counties Association. In his management there, in which lay the germ of the ultimate triumph of Puritanism, we see nothing but extraordinary alertness in using the ordi- nary means to compass the ends of the war. There is nothing of that ingenuity of device, those cunning surprises, attributed to Garibaldi in his romantic career. There is the ever-present sense of an enemy to be encountered, and of all the ways that it is possible for that enemy to operate, and a consequent energy of preventive volition. He him- self confesses, as a sort of apology for setting his machinery incessantly in motion, that he is, perhaps, a little over- anxious about things. He is a ian to be satisfied with nothing but success. His religious theory was, that Provi- dence is with the right, and whenever he fails, he is full of self-recrimination ; there was nothing that would soothe him under the reverses encountered in his first expeditions to the West Indies. The peculiar energy that characterized him, all his life through, is the best .contrasting example that could be cited in opposition to the abundance of mere spontaneous activity; the point of the contrast was well 336 GENIUS. expressed by the phrase of a contemporary, that he could set well to the mark. His was no aimless effusion of strength, no mere energizing for its own sake. A career more thoroughly prudential, practical, well-directed, and therefore triumphant, the world need never expect to see. His Sympathies were not less remarkable than his Prudence. His usurpation is becoming less and less a stumbling-block im the way of our appreciation of his disinterestedness ; while the positive evidence, summed up in the one fact of his being our greatest Apostle of Tolera- tion, is more than sufficient. It was not in settled times, when a mild Government thinks it safe to relax some ancient restrictions, but in a life-and-death struggle that Cromwell displayed an amount of toleration that had never before been known in England. And if this was one leading, perhaps the strongest, motive for his taking arms, it is all the more to his credit as an original genius in the department of human liberty. He tolerated everything but intolerance ; in other words, he stopped short of com- mitting suicide. If genius is understood as the promul- gation of ideas beyond the age, sanctioned by their com- plete recognition in succeeding ages, we ought not to refuse the name to the promoter of new moral ideas, or more enlightened impulses towards our fellow-men. A superior native force of true disinterestedness must be assigned to the man who, in the midst of Revolutionary troubles, enlarges the sphere of freedom of thought and conscience, and that praise is due to Cromwell. If we would see a crowning instance, we should witness his affording an asylum to a celebrated Royalist, threatened with assassination by his own friends, I mean Hobbes, whose life presents the singular phenomenon of a _philo- sopher and sceptic, tolerated by a bigot and maintained by a nobleman. Intellectually, that is to say, in the region of knowledge a SCIENTIFIC GENIUS. 857 and ideas, as contrasted with the intellect’ for good and evil to self and others, Cromwell was a superior, but nota | first-rate man. His mental grasp would do credit to an ordinary professional career, but would not itself raise any man to the elevation that his moral, prudential, or prac- tical intelligence would have secured to moderate abilities in the other region. He could think and write with clear- ness and precision, and his speeches, with all their lumber- ing grammar (very much in the style of the Duke of Wellington), have their earnestness sometimes embodied in apt and forcible metaphor. Such clearness of moral vision, so to speak, such a sense of the ‘mark,’ gives a prodigious advantage to a man’s intellect in mere ideas. People do not look at them as they would appreciate Baconian similes or the fancies of Shelley ; their purpose-like pecu- liarity redeems them from commonplace, as when a general makes his troops perform an ordinary manceuvre at a felicitous juncture. My closing illustrations shall be from Science. It must now be apparent what are the elements of the scientific mind, according to my view of it. The strong natural retention of arbitrary forms, in company with the genuine scientific interest in abstractions and general propositions, is raised to the force of genius by means of the third power of the Intellect—the recognition of likeness in diversity. A naturalist may be original by traversing an unexplored field—the proof of genius is to make discoveries in a well- paced track. This deeper penetration is almost exclusively owing to the success of a superior identifying faculty. That greatest of all great discoveries, universal gravitation, implied this power in a special degree, although accom- panied with other circumstances of no less bearing on the result. To see in the old trite phenomenon of a falling stone or apple, or whatever it was, a resemblance to the Z 338 GENIUS. deflection of the moon to the earth, it was essential that the faculty of seeing likeness disguised by unlike accom- paniments should be far reaching, and it was also essential, by previous analysis of the planetary forces, to confer upon the deflecting or central power the characteristic in common to it with a falling body on the earth. Without this analysis of a planet’s motion into tangential and central tendencies, there was no likeness at all between the two phenomena; after the analysis, there was a likeness, but a remote and muffled likeness, and the occurrence of the flash of identification between the two in the mind of Newton was an illustrious case of the operation of this greatest faculty of the intellect. If the long series of Newton’s discoveries—mathematical and physical—were not full of the same recurring power, along with the more ordinary talent of retention of scientific forms, we should not put such stress on the fetch involved in his highest discovery ; but, in point of fact, that was merely a more telling example of an aptitude, that was indispensable throughout all that he did in the way of scientific origi- nality. The next greatest illustration of genius in science, as turning upon the stretch of the power of Similarity, is Franklin’s identification of the thundery discharge with the discharge of common electricity. These two facts in their separation had been before the minds of many men, but Franklin was the first to bridge the chasm, and see the one in the other. The truth is, that after observations have been collected, or experiments made, the scientific man aims at generalizing these into some comprehensive property or law, and the generalizing impetus is in its essence a succession of identifying strokes, It is not once that the power of Similarity is required to complete some great discovery—the demand for it is incessant. Every attempt to gather a few particulars under a common head, IDENTIFYING POWER RUN WILD. 339 to extend the sphere of a class already formed, so as to > comprehend new individuals, has to be effected by the agency of the identifying force, and he that is wanting in this power will be so tardy in catching up likenesses, as to make no progress worthy of the name, Sometimes we meet with men remarkably powerful in seeing resemblances, and therefore highly original in their suggestions, but singularly loose in verifying them. Such aman was Fourier. Such also was Oken, the discoverer of the analogy between the cranium and the spine of vertebrate animals. His analogical force—in other words, his reach of similarity—was immense ; but, for want of a clear notion of scientific evidence, only a very small number of his analo- gies have proved of any value ; he threw out his fancies by hundreds, and left other people to test them. In him the pure intellectual force of attraction of similars revelled, rather than worked ; nothing that he suggested was true, because it came from him. He is the type of the sugges- tive or the inventive mind in its extreme phase, unbalanced by the consideration of the scientific end, which is, not fancies but, truth. When we study minds of this class, we are made aware that even in science, something is required beyond the highest stretch of the intellectual forces strictly so called. Great discrimination, retention, and similarity will make a vast show, a grand profusion of thoughts, images, comparisons, generalizations ; but whether these represent faithfully the order of the world, will depend upon other mental peculiarities, not very far removed from the peculiarities of the practical mind. It is the presence of some distinct ends—meaning evils to be warded off, or good to be secured, immediate or remote—that distinguishes the genius of practice. Now, in genuine science, the special evils to be entertained by the mind are falsehood, incon- sistency, inaccuracy ; and according as these evils are vividly and constantly present, will be the endeavour to obtain, not Z 2 340 At GENIUS. knowledge simply, but true knowledge. The difference, then, between the scientific man and the practical man would seem, after all, not to be very wide ; the real antithesis is between the intelligence simply disporting itself, and the intelligence controlled by ends. But although science and practice thus agree in being worthless, except as hitting some mark, they still differ in the fewness and simplicity of the ends in the one case, and their multifarious character in the other. Truth is a simple and circumscribed object ; _ it is but one solitary condition to fulfil, although a very momentous one; whereas in any department of affairs, the conditions to be fulfilled are so various, that it is almost a sufficient occupation fer the mind to keep them all in view. A statistician has merely to sum up his figures and check his returns to see that there is no incorrectness; an ad- ministrator of poor-law, or of police, has to avoid innu- merable pitfalls in every movement that he takes. Hence the man of science has more mind to spare for intellectual constructions and originality than a man of business; he has to steer clear of the one evil, falsehood, the other has to steer clear of a multitude of evils, like a navigator in the Goodwin sands. This remark is still farther illustrated by comparing the sciences of purest speculation on the one hand, with those of pure experiment on the other. The first, such as Mathematics, admit of easy verification ; their touchstone is simple; invention is all the labour. This is the region where the intellectual forces have their freest scope. The other sciences, such as Chemistry and Physiology, involve in their operations a more complicated system of testing, and their prosecution demands something of the same aptitudes as setting a new manufacture to work, or navigating a fleet. Hence our greatest inventors, as Watt, have been men of scientific calibre; and our great experimental philosophers, as Davy, Faraday, Wheat- stone, are the authors of some of our most valuable inven- | PROFOUND THOUGHT. Sil tions. The genius of manipulation belongs to some men, as Priestley, Cavendish, Wollaston, Faraday; and the genius of pure speculation belongs to others, Dalton, for example ; while Newton seems to have combined both endowments in his own individual person. It might be shown by many examples that in every subject implying thoughé, as distinct from mere memory, the power of identifying like things, through distance and disguise, is the main element of intellectual force. There can be no great ability without it ; a certain amount is necessary even in Talent, as explained in the preceding chapter, although it is only when we take original power into consideration, that the highest reaches of the identifying faculty are involved. Whoever has stood forward in the history of the world, as opening up new regions of thought and speculation, as systematizing and consolidating the facts accumulated by many observers, as pushing forward existing doctrines into new applications, or supporting them by original arguments and illustrations, has been fitted for his work by a superior endowment in the seeing of resemblances. From Plato ‘and Aristotle, to Kant and Hamilton, through a long series of Logicians, Metaphysicians, Theologians, Moralists, Poli- tical theorists, &c., as well as in the ranks of Mathematical and Physical science, the greatest minds have had _ this power as apart of their intellectual equipment. It depends upon the other powers of the mind, and especially on the local susceptibilities—the Senses, the Prudential, and the Sympathetic dispositions—whether great force of similarity shall culminate in a poet or in a philosopher, a politician or a theologian. It is singular to observe the same funda- mental capability so controlled by its adjuncts, that in one mind it shall cover poverty of thought with luxuriance of style, and, in another, reveal profundity in the subject matter through barrenness in the expression, issuing in Alexander Pope or in Joseph Butler. 342 GENIUS, I have expressly cited this last name, because we could not have a better example of the influence that a man may exert upon the world, by being gifted beyond his fellows with the power in question. The very title of Butler’s greatest work expresses the intellectual element involved in it; ‘ Analogy’ is only another name for similarity. And as his purpose was to supply an additional vindication of the Christian religion, by showing the conformity of its super- natural parts with the natural order of the world, the carry- ing out of this purpose required a constant application of the power of discerning identities unfelt before. He pro- fessed to supply no new facts, but only new applications and juxtapositions of facts. ‘If the reader, he observes, ‘should meet here with anything which he had not before attended to, it will not be in the observations upon the constitution and course of nature, these being all obvious ; but in the application of them. ‘The proper force of the following Treatise lies in the whole general analogy considered together.’ And a commentator remarks: ‘ This way of arguing from what is acknowledged to what is dis- puted, from things known to other things that resemble them, from that part of the divine establishment that is exposed to view to that more important part which lies beyond it, is on all hands confessed to be just. By this method Sir Isaac Newton has unfolded the system of nature ; by the same method Bishop Butler has explained the system of grace.’ The general scope of Butler’s argu- mentation is well known. He meets all the difficulties alleged against revelation by parallel difficulties tobe found in the scheme of nature; and in the discovery of these parallels lies his peculiar sagacity. The many observations scattered over his writings that have been esteemed for their profundity, owe their force to the flash of some hidden identity that gives a new aspect to an old problem. His celebrated vindication of Benevolence or Disinterestedness BISHOP BUTLER AND POPE. 343 as a part of Human Nature, in opposition to the moralists who resolved all human motives into a regard for self, consists in running a parallel, according to his wonted fashion. ‘There is a natural principle of benevolence in man, which is in some degree to society what self-love is to the ndividual. And after carrying out the parallelism into various minute particulars, he winds up by re-asserting it in another form; ‘we were made for society, and to promote the happiness of it; as we were intended to take care of our own life, and health, and private good.’ That we may still better see the difference between pro- found thought and brilliant illustration, while both must repose upon a common foundation, let me quote a few passages from Pope’s Essay on Man, and compare them with the style of Butler's writings. ‘When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains ; When the du/1 ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s god : Then shall man’s pride and dulness comprehend His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end; Why doing, suff’ring, check’d, impell’d ; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity.’ Here a difficulty in the scheme of human life is not met by other positions that man is placed in, and which, being quoted, might help to reconcile us to the difficulty, but by two comparisons poetically striking, but logically un- satisfying. Butler would never have gone to the inferior creatures for an analogy. He would have recalled to our view, as a general principle, of which numerous other examples could be given, ‘the Government of God, con- sidered as a Scheme, or Constitution, imperfectly compre- hended, and would have endeavoured to point out that the imperfect comprehension was a fact of the Natural World, as well as of the Supernatural. No human being really beset with earnest doubts would take any comfort 344: mer GENIUS. from Pope’s couplets; many have found repose in Butler’s reasonings. _ Again, on the ruling Passion of the aul ~~ = ‘ Yes, Nature’s road must ever be prefer’d ; Reason is here no guide, but still a guard: - ’Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow, And treat this passion more as friend than foe : A mightier Pow’r the strong direction sends, And sev’ral men impels to sev’ral ends. Like varying winds, by other passions tost, This drives them constant to a certain coast.’ We have here still a profuse employment of the power of Similarity in adducing lively illustrations, not only with very little force to instruct the mind, but with a tendency to dis- tort the truth. Comparg this with Butler’s view of the hu- man constitution as made up, first, of blind passions and affections, and next of rational self-love, and Conscience, acting in combination and conflict ; and we shall be aware of the difference between a close observer of phenomena anxious to get at the truth, and a genius for language that cares principally for poetic effect, and takes the thoughts at secondhand, or from a mere superficial glance at the facts. Butler has handled, with great sagacity, Comparison, Benevolence, Resentment, and other emotions; and his method is to observe and compare human experiences, till he find what he thinks a consistent representation of the general character of each passion. His identifying faculty was employed to obtain truth, like a man of science in any other walk. Remove from his mind this as a foremost end; give him the local susceptibilities to colour and form, to words, cadence, and metre ; and the same reach of the identifying faculty would have emerged in a poet. | THE END. et Fon ie hs as yb V . 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